People walk at a crowded market in the old quarters of Delhi, India. File Photo: REUTERS/ANUSHREE FADNAVIS
Given the widespread exposure of Indians to Covid-19 virus and a reasonably-high vaccination rate, India will likely be less affected by the new strain, Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Thursday. That may change if omicron is effective at getting past all immune defences, he said.
India saw the world’s fastest-surging Covid-19 outbreak in early-May with daily new infections exceeding 400,000 when the highly-infectious Delta variant was ripping through the crowded nation of 1.4 billion people. The deadly virus wave invigorated the country’s vaccination campaign — more than a billion shots have been administered already — and created high levels of natural immunity in the population.
So far, India has not detected a case with the omicron variant. But it is “just matter of time” before it’s spotted in India, Laxminarayan said. The newest strain has rapidly spread to two dozen countries since being detected on November 24.
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