There is a potential scenario that coronavirus vaccines may become ineffective in the emerging situations, India’s Covid-19 task force Dr VK Paul said on Tuesday, reported PTI.
“In the wake of the last three weeks of living with Omicron, we have seen how such doubts have come up,” Paul said at an event of the Confederation of Indian Industry. “Some of them may be genuine. We still do not have the final picture and that worries us.”
The statement came amid the increasing spread of the new Omicron variant across the world. The strain has so far been detected in 77 countries and is spreading faster than any other mutation of the coronavirus, according to the World Health Organization.
In India, 60 cases of the variant have been found as of Wednesday morning. The first cases were detected in the country on December 2 in Karnataka.
At the event on Tuesday, Paul said there was a need to create a vaccine that could target the new mutations and one that could adapt to the changing nature of the variants.
“We have to be ready to be able to have a situation where resiliently we are able to modify the vaccines as required,” he said. “This may not happen every three months but this could happen every year perhaps. Therefore, that needs to be factored in.”
Paul said that the priority now was to ensure universal vaccine coverage and that no person is left behind in the inoculation drive, reported India Today. He said that there are 360 crore people in the world who have not been vaccinated.
“Lastly, it is a science of the highest quality that we need to invest in to tackle deep challenges,” he said. “Our national investment in science is all public money.”
Paul said that the Covid-19 pandemic cannot be taken lightly and the unpredictability in the emerging scenarios needed to addressed.
“[The] pandemic is not over, we will continue to deal with uncertainty, even though we hope that we are possibly moving in the direction of endemicity, hopefully of a mild disease, that we can tackle,” Paul said.
Endemicity refers to a situation in which a disease is restricted to a locality or religion.
Globally, 27.15 crore people have been infected with the coronavirus disease and 53.21 lakh people have died due to it, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
As of Wednesday, India has reported 3.47 crore Covid-19 infections and 4.76 lakh deaths.
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Top 10 Omicron updates: Telangana reports three new cases, India’s variant count rises to 60
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