There might be 14 lakh cases per day of new variant, at current rate of spread: Dr V K Paul

At a time when the central government issued an alert to all States and UTs following large scale spread of Omicron, people's behaviour of dismissing this news variant of Covid19 as mild has put the government in a limbo. Dr V K Paul, chairman of India's Covid19 task force talks to ETV Bharat about the same.

New Delhi: "Omicron is spreading at a rate we have not seen with any previous variant. We are concerned that people are dismissing Omicron as mild," said Dr V K Paul, chairman of India's Covid19 task force.

Asserting that vaccines will not get any country out of the crisis, Dr Paul said, "Masks, physical distancing, ventilation and hand hygiene should also be followed along with vaccines," added Dr Paul.

According to the health ministry statistics, as many as 126 cases of Omicron has been detected in 11 States in India with Maharashtra leading the list with 43 cases.

Comparing UK's data on Omicron cases, Dr Paul on Friday predicted, "If we look at the scale of spread in the UK and if there is a similar outbreak in India, then given our population, there will be 14 lakh cases every day."

He, however, later refused to make anymore predictions.

Meanwhile, the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Sequencing Consortium (INSACOG) has found a few cases where people don't have any travel history. "We are trying to find out whether any of the contacts of Omicron positive (with no travel history) has visited foreign country or not," said a senior official in Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

Dr Tamorish Kole, president of the Asian Society of Emergency Medicine said, "Technically when we can't detect a source of spread, we call it a community transmission. Since many patients are asymptomatic or having mild or vague symptoms with Omicron, it is difficult to measure the exact burden of infection."

"It's an evolving situation. More studies are required to ascertain whether the new variant of Covid19 can evade vaccines immunity or not," added Dr Kole

Earlier, the government has appealed to the people to follow Covid-19 appropriate behaviour. The government has asked to cancel all non-essential travels including holiday plans. Avoid crowded places and complete full course of vaccination.

The WHO said on Saturday that Omicron has been found in 89 counties. "With increase transmissibility, we are going to have more cases of Omicron and there will be more people hospitalized," the WHO said.