Stress on finding ways to contain Covid, co-exist with it

PARAG BISWAS, SNS, SILIGURI, 31 OCTOBER 21 : Make no mistake: Covid-19 is not Spanish flu- the exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic which occurred in three waves only for a little over a year, starting front March 1918 and subsiding completely by the summer of 1919.

In contrast, the coronavirus pandemic is almost two years old now and there have been more than three waves of the pandemic in many commies such as France, Canada, Malaysia and Vietnam, and still the pandemic is showing no signs of letting up.

There have been as many as five waves of the pandemic in England and Brazil, and Russia and Hongkong are now grappling with the fourth wave of the pandemic.

As India scaled tine peak of one billion Covid -19 vaccine doses on October 21, the health authorities in China, where the first known case of the disease was identified in December 2019, demanded high vigilance at ports of entry as the latest covid-19 outbreak there was developing rapidly

The alarming increase in cases of breakthrough infections across the world and the declaration by the head of the largest global manufacturer of covid vaccines - the Serum Institute of India CEO Adar Poonawalla - that a booster dose of Covishield was a must, have once again led to vaccine hesitancy in many parts of the world. The number of Covid cases and deaths in our state is also on the rise after the Durga pujas, even as the government is preparing to open educational institutions from November 16.

In such a scenario, experts in north Bengal are stressing on the need to work out ways and plans to both contain the spread of the disease and to co-exist with it.

According to a senior professor of the Department of Biotechnology University of North Bengal, Dr Ranadhir Chakraborty, the virus will not disappear too soon or too easily but become endemic in various pockets across the world and put pressure on health systems there during various periods of time in the coming years. "The technical word for a disease that we are obliged to host indefinitely is "endemic." It means that the disease-causing agent - the coronavirus in this case-will always be circulating in some parts of the world at least for some years now, causing periodic disease outbreaks in different areas, depending on the degree of endimicity in those areas," he said.

Dr Chakraborty felt that the degree of endimicity across the world wouId vary on the basis of the extent to which the governments were able to vaccinate the people in their region or country.

"There's no denying that no region or country has entered the calmer waters of endemicity yet. We are all still on the white-knuckle ride of the pandemic phase, during which outbreaks will be unpredictable and bad. But one thing is clear: the transition to endemicity will happen at different times in different countries and regions. It's not unreasonable to think that the developed countries, with their high case numbers and vaccination rates, might be those closest to the tipping point - which is why the developing and under-developed countries are watching them closely," he said.

The senior microbiologist maintained that there were so many populations across the globe, which were vulnerable to the virus.

"There are simply too many people in the world, who are still susceptible to the virus. A higher case-fatality rate (CFR) has been found in countries with mow smokers above the age of 70 and higher disability-adjusted life year (DAIY) rate, that is, larger geriatric populations with comorbities. That is why, cases have come down by 17 and 21 percent respectively in African and Western Pacific regions, while it continues to soar in European and South-East Asian countries, according to the weekly epidemiological data collected between October 19 and 26. Only when such pools of susceptibility dry up, we can say the pandemic is over. From then on, the spread of the virus will be sustained by gentler forces such as the gradual waning of immunity in a certain population and the emergence of relatively milder variants. But nobody knows yet when that will happen as there is still uncertainty about how long a person remains immune to Sars-CoV-2 following natural infection or vaccination, and about the virus's capacity to generate variants that aren't mild," he pointed out.

Dr Chakraborty cautioned that vaccines alone might not guard the world fully against the deadly virus. "CFR has been found to be inversely proportional to low respiratory infections. People belonging to low and middle income groups have been found to be more immune to the disease as they are more exposed to a variety of pathogens right from their birth. It has also been found that antibodies acquired through infection or inoculation alone does not prevent the virus from causing the disease in future. You need to have sufficient quantities of memory B cells, memory T cells, Cytotoxic T cells and follicular helper T cells in your system to be able to prevent the disease from catching you," he maintained.

Dr Kaushik Bhattacharya, a renowned surgeon of north Bengal, who shared Dr Chakraborty's views, held that even as the world was working on a war-footing to vaccinate its population, one collective action problem was taking the centre-stage against the backdrop of another.

"Covid-19 has been described as a dress rehearsal for our ability to solve the bigger problems of the future, so it seems important to point out that the pandemic isn't over. Instead, joined-up thinking has become more important than ever for solving the problem of Covid-19. The end game has been obvious for a while: rather than getting rid of covid-19 entirely, both the governments and the general public should work together to combat the disease and to get used to it at the same time," he said.