Similar to flu shots, India may need to update its Covid-19 boosters with the latest strain of the coronavirus, former director of All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Dr Randeep Guleria told News18.com.
A renowned pulmonologist, Dr Guleria said the vaccines in India are currently using the Wuhan strain or the strain which was circulating in December 2019.
“By now, the strain of the virus has changed and evolved dramatically. From alpha, beta, delta to now omicron and its sub-lineages, the virus has mutated long back,” Dr Guleria said.
Flu vaccines are updated every year using the latest strain in circulation.
According to Guleria, when Indian vaccines were tested in trials, they reported efficacy of 80 to 90%. “But now, the effectiveness of these vaccines against the latest strain might have come down significantly.”
Guleria, who is the president of AIIMS Bilaspur, said other countries including the US and the UK have already updated their vaccines. “They are now using bivalent vaccines which work against both the old strain and the latest omicron strain.”
“We need to analyse more data if updating vaccines makes more sense and if people should be vaccinated using the latest strain instead of the older ones,” he added.
‘No Need to Panic’
As India registers a spike in cases of a novel coronavirus, Guleria said while there is no need to create panic, but one should be more cautious.
India recorded 5,880 new Covid cases in 24 hours, government data showed on Monday, taking the active caseload to 35,199. The daily positivity rate stands at 6.91% while the weekly positivity rate is at 3.67%.
Guleria, who is the chairman of the Institute of Internal Medicine, Respiratory & Sleep Medicine at Medanta, pointed out three reasons behind the surge in cases – lack of Covid-appropriate behaviour among the public, the mutation in the virus leading it to become more infectious and changes in weather causing more viral infections.
He agreed that the new XBB.1.16 variant could be one of the reasons behind driving the recent rise. “It is also a sublineage of Omicron and we have seen in the past that omicron leads to mild infection.”
However, he asked to adopt caution, especially among vulnerable populations including the elderly and people with co-morbid conditions.
“If cases of infection will increase, chances of these vulnerable people getting the disease also increases,” he warned.
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