The second wave of the pandemic has just moved out of the big cities, but the intensified spread of Covid-19 in rural India is a bigger concern now than a possible third wave, says Anurag Agrawal, director of the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB).
India News: The Delta variant or B.1.617.2 strain, which was first detected in India, is more infectious than the Alpha variant or B.1.1.7, first detected in the
IGIB chief Anurag Agrawal said children also act as a backdoor passage for the infection in their parents and grandparents.
NEW DELHI: Children do face the risk of contracting the coronavirus infection, but it tends to be less severe among them, Anurag Agrawal, director of the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), said on Monday.
Agrawal, whose institute has conducted a countrywide sero survey of employees of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research s (CSIR) sister organisations, said children also act as a backdoor passage for the infection in their parents and grandparents.
Reacting to a tweet on the rate of Covid-19 by age group in Bolton, United Kingdom, Agrawal tweeted, (This) reaffirms a simple but overlooked fact. Children aren t really protected against infection. We know that from this and serosurveys.
NEW DELHI: If the vaccination drive against coronavirus is not ramped up and Covid-19 appropriate-behaviour is not maintained, there is a possibility of a third wave of the pandemic in 6-8 months, said M Vidyasagar, a scientist involved in the Sutra Model which uses mathematics to project the trajectory of Covid-19.
He, however, stressed the Sutra model has not predicted any third wave and it is working on it.
The IIT-Hyderabad professor cited a paper by Italian researchers on infected people with decreasing antibodies, which give some sort of immunity, in six months. If the antibodies are lost, then there is a chance of immunity going down. In this case, vaccination has to be ramped up and Covid-19 appropriate-behaviour must be practiced. If not then there is a possibility of a third wave in 6-8 months, Vidyasagar said.
Is Atmanirbhar Bharat Holding Up India s Genome Sequencing Program?
India s newly launched programme to widely and rapidly sequence genomes of the novel coronavirus has already run into major hurdles.
Illustration: ColiN00B/pixabay
Bengaluru: Rakesh Mishra, the director of Hyderabad’s Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), is frustrated. CCMB has been sequencing SARS-CoV-2 viral genomes since the COVID-19 pandemic began â initially as part of its own research program and since December 2020 as part of the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG), a group of ten labs the government put together to ramp up sequencing across to India.
To do its work, Mishra’s team needs specialised plastic containers and reagents that go into sequencing machines. But buying them has become needlessly complicated in the last year, taking time away from his lab’s core jobs, according to Mishra.