"India may be entering endemic stage of COVID-19": WHO Scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan

 

With India showing a continuous dip in daily COVID-19 cases, Chief Scientist of WHO Dr Soumya Swaminathan believes that India may be entering some kind of stage of endemicity where there is a low or moderate level of transmission going on.

The endemic stage is when a population learns to live with a virus. It's very different from the epidemic stage when the virus overwhelms a population.

Speaking with The Wire, Swaminathan said "We may be entering some kind of stage of endemicity where is a low level transmission or moderate level transmission going on but we are not seeing the kinds of exponential growth and peaks that we saw a few months ago."

"As far as India is concerned that seems to be what is happening and because of size of India and heterogeneity of population and immunity status in different parts of the country in different pockets, it is very feasible that the situation may continue like this with ups and downs in different parts of the country" added Swaminathan.

On clearance of Covaxin, she said that the decision can be made hopefully by mid-September.