India on Tuesday reported 1,247 Covid cases and 1 fatality. The cumulative caseload is 43,045,527 (11,860 active cases) and 521,966 fatalitiesWorldwide: Over 505.04 million cases and over 6.19 million fatalities.Vaccination in India: Over 1.86 billion doses. Worldwide: Over 11.18 billion doses.TODAY’S TAKEAre reinfections behind rise in cases?A significant number of people catching Covid-19 these days are reinfections — those who had tested positive for Covid either during the Delta wave or Omicron wave, reports ET.”What we are seeing is that multiple people in the family are coming with flu symptoms. They are testing positive for Covid. Most of them have mild form of Covid illness. They are fully vaccinated, some of them must have had an infection in the past, too. But we must remember that vaccination doesn’t prevent you from getting the disease, but it has turned these cases into mild cases with nobody requiring hospitlisation or any other intervention,” says Sandeep Budhiraja, group medical director at Max Healthcare. Reinfections are possible. “It is possible to get reinfected in less than three months but that’s not an indication that vaccines don’t work,” says Rajeev Jayadevan, co-chairman of Indian Medical Association’s (IMA) National Covid Task Force.”Previous infection does not alter the risk of future infection. In the Delta wave 70% got infected and then in Omicron again 50 to 60% got infected. Whether past infection or not, every second Indian got an infection in the recent wave,” says Chadrakant Lahariya, an epidemiologist and public policy specialist.There is a clear increase in cases in school-going children too, say doctors. “There is a clear increase in cases and mostly these cases have been seen in schools. We know that largely schoolchildren are not vaccinated. However, we know as per sero surveillance studies that many of our children have been seropositive, which means they have had a natural infection in the past. Therefore, we may not be wrong in assuming that the children are getting reinfected with breakthrough infections. To ascertain whether this reinfection is by the Omicron variant, the Kappa, or the Omicron XE variant, we would need to do extensive genomic analysis. There is not enough data now in this regard. However, the majority of these have been mild and we know children may carry the infection even without manifesting the illness. Nevertheless, reinfections are common,” he said. More details hereTELL ME ONE THINGWhy summer months will see an uptick in booster dosesWith just 2.5 crore booster or precaution doses having been administered since their launch on January 10 this year, the government is expecting a huge surge during the next two months as several people will meet the eligibility criteria of a nine-month gap from their second dose.Last year, from May 13, the Centre issued new directions on the gap between the two doses of Covishield, increasing it to 12-16 weeks against the earlier dose interval of 8 to 12 weeks, chiefly to offset the severe vaccine shortage which had even led to vaccination centres being shut on certain days as they ran out of stock.Consequently, the second dose for a majority of people — the increase in dose interval led to a surge in the coverage of the population who received their first dose — fell due from September onwards, which means that the nine month period for them gets over from May onwards this year.Additionally, those who suffered from a breakthrough infection — fully vaccinated people who tested positive for Covid-19 — during the third wave that hit India during December last year also became eligible for a booster dose from March onwards. However, until April 10, which is when boosters were allowed for those above 18 years of age, the Centre only allowed boosters for frontline and healthcare workers, as also the 60-plus age group.There is therefore a likelihood that even this group of people who suffered breakthrough infections will avail of precaution doses in the coming months — leading to a further increase in the administration of booster doses.This is likely to be further bolstered by the findings of a recent study which says that immunity gained after an Omicron infection — among the unvaccinated — is rather weak and is unlikely to offer protection from other variants of the novel coronavirus. Even among the fully vaccinated, including those who received their booster shot, the study says that while the antibody count was higher, the efficiency was lower.Follow news that matters to you in real-time.
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