COVID XE Cases: Dr Gagandeep Kang said India’s experience last year has left a hybrid immunity
New Delhi:
India’s total COVID-19 cases are low, although cases have spiked in several cities over the past week. For example, Delhi is growing COVID-19 cases among children in schoolsWhich is a worrying sign.
India’s top biomedical scientist Dr Gagandeep Kang said it is not known whether the XE variant is causing a rise in cases. “We don’t necessarily know that all the cases being reported are of the XE variant, until we sequence them all,” Dr Kang told NDTV today. “…when we have all the pieces of the picture, only then can we interpret the data. People’s data alone is not enough,” he said.
On what the world knows about the Xe variant, Dr. Kang said, “Xe is a derivative of Omicron. In terms of what we know about Omicron, it is a virus that spreads to the upper respiratory tract rather than the lower respiratory tract.” It replicates more on the respiratory tract, so the symptoms you’d expect to see would be upper respiratory tract infection, fever, restlessness, but not the kind of severe illness that used to take people to hospitals before.”
“I think focusing on symptoms and expecting symptoms to tell us which type we have is often an illusion, even though it’s often highlighted in the media. Other than the sequence data you really need Clinical demographic information is needed. It tells you which variant it is,” Dr. Kang said.
He said that the gradual increase in cases cannot be termed as the beginning of the fourth wave yet. “It would be a stretch to say so,” Dr Kang said, adding that people should be prepared for reinfection, whether they have been previously infected or vaccinated.
On India’s low cases despite rising numbers in other countries, Dr Kang said India’s experience last year has left it with a type of hybrid immunity complemented by vaccination. “We haven’t found a very good protection against different types of viruses. This was clearly demonstrated in the omicron wave,” she said.
There is no scientific basis for the 9-month gap between the second dose and the booster dose, he said.
Dr Kang indicated that parents should not worry too much as schools have opened.
“I think if you have to get a covid infection the best time to get it is when you are a healthy baby. Basically, most of the kids who are infected don’t show symptoms… Recent sero surveys indicate that 80 per child has already been infected. We shouldn’t expect protection from infection. As the virus evolves, it continues to develop in ways that we often see -times allow to infect … This is especially true of children.
“So the data that parents should be looking at is not really about cases, or about the number of children in whom the infection is detected, or about children who have mild symptoms. This Exactly how many wounds should there be in infected children that need to be hospitalised? And we will see that those numbers are very small.
“All the data we have in India shows that children who require hospitalization have some form of illness,” Dr Kang told NDTV. Immediate vaccination is needed for children under the age of 12 who have comorbidities.
Kang said that all these figures show that closing educational institutions in panic would not be an ideal step.