World Health Organization (WHO) Chief Scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan on Monday said that compared to the delta variant of Covid-19, reinfections in the omicron variant — 90 days after the contagion first strikes — are three times more common Speaking simply to CNBC-TV18, Dr Swaminathan said that while data on the acridity and transmissibility on variants would take time, what scientists know at present is that omicron is a dominant strain in South Africa.
“ Reinfections 90 days after infection are three times more common in omicron compared to delta. (These are) early days to decrypt the clinical features of omicron infection. There’s a pause between the rise in cases and the rise in hospitalisation. We must stay for two to three weeks to study hospitalisation rates to know how severe this complaint is,” she said, adding “ Cases in South Africa are rising presto with omicron variant. Reports show that further children are getting infected by this strain in that country. South Africa is also testing further.”
Dr Swaminathan refocused out that not numerous vaccines are available for children presently and only a sprinkle of countries have started vaccinations for kiddies and advised at a implicit rise in cases due to it.
“ Not numerous vaccines available for children and veritably many countries vaccinating children. Children and the unvaccinated may get further infections when cases rise. We’re still staying for data to conclude omicron variant’s impact on children,” she said.
“ We need to take a comprehensive and wisdom- grounded approach on vaccination. It’s the same contagion we’re dealing with and hence measures to cover it’ll be thesame.However, it’ll depends on how important‘ vulnerable escape’the variant has,” she added, If we need a variant vaccine All countries, she said, must study the vaccine data by age and region to assess those who have been missed and a “ precedence should be to vaccinate all those progressed above 18 times to reduce transmission Big data from the US has shown that vaccines continue to have strong protection against death, she said. “ There’s inequity in vaccine content encyclopedically. The WHO’s Covax installation has a large advance purchase order for Covishield so the Covishield inventories for WHO’s Covax installation will increase now. Its covax installation has a contract for Covovax as well.”
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The WHO’s SAGE Committee will meet on December 16 to assess Exigency Use Authorization (EUA) for Covovax As numerous as 25 countries, Dr Swaminathan said, are floundering with a low vaccine content The European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) are also assessing the Novavax vaccine this month. (We) have requested the vaccine manufacturers to give visibility on vaccine inventories. The manufacturers have in once prioritised other orders over Covax and hence the they need previous visibility on inventories,” she said. “ We want further data participating in a epidemic and we need to support countries that are telling variants and data. We need a coordinated agreement among countries to not put knee haul responses,” she said.
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