Third Wave May Not Be As Bad As Second: AIIMS Chief Randeep Guleria

AIIMS Director Dr.Randeep Guleria said that third wave of Covid-19 would not be as bad as the second wave.
In an interview with NDTV on Saturday, Dr Guleria said, “There are a lot of debates on whether the third wave will be more severe than the second… my feeling is the subsequent wave will not be as bad as the second.”

It was predicted earlier that third wave of Covid-19 will hit the country in the coming days.

The AIIMS chief said that the delta variant is of more immediate concern and the government is “closely monitoring” the situation.

The Delta plus variant is reported to be more transmissible than delta variant which is the reason behind the second wave which has been wrecking havoc in the country.

“We are very closely monitoring that (the ‘delta plus’ variant) (but) at the moment ‘delta plus’ is not the dominant variant in India… the ‘delta’ variant is. So we need to actively track it… do genome sequencing to see how this variant is behaving in our population and prepare accordingly,” Dr Guleria stated.

Earlier this month, the AIIMS chief said that there is no data, either from India or globally, to show that children will be seriously infected in any subsequent COVID-19 waves.

He said that “it is a piece of misinformation that subsequent waves of the COVID-19 pandemic are going to cause severe illness in children”.

Noting that 60 per cent to 70 per cent of the children who got infected and got admitted in hospitals during the second wave in India, had either comorbidity or low immunity, Dr Guleria said that healthy children recovered with mild illness without need for hospitalization.

Guleria further asserted that “Covid appropriate behavior is key to preventing future waves”.

Explaining why pandemics return again, the AIIMS Director said “waves normally occur in pandemics caused due to respiratory viruses; the 1918 Spanish Flu, H1N1 (swine) flu are examples”.

“The second wave of 1918 Spanish Flu was the biggest, after which there was a smaller third wave,” said Guleria. “And as we know, SARS-Cov-2 is a respiratory virus.”

Multiple waves occur when there is a susceptible population and when a large part of the population acquires immunity against the infection, “the virus becomes endemic and infection becomes seasonal like that of H1N1 that commonly spreads during monsoon or winters”, he said.

“Waves can occur due to change in the virus (such as new variants). Since new mutations become more infectious, there is a higher chance for the virus to spread.”

Guleria said that one of the reasons behind a wave can be human behavior and cautioned that “whenever cases increase, there is a fear in people and human behavior changes. People strictly follow Covid appropriate behaviors and non-pharmaceutical interventions help break the chain of transmission. But when unlocking resumes, people tend to think that not much infection will happen and tend to not follow Covid appropriate behavior”.

Due to this, the AIIMS chief said, the virus again starts spreading in the community, leading potentially to another wave.

“If we have to stop subsequent waves, we need to aggressively follow Covid appropriate behavior until we can say that a significant number of our population is vaccinated or has acquired natural immunity.

“When enough people are vaccinated or when we acquire natural immunity against the infection, then these waves will stop. The only way out is to strictly follow Covid appropriate behavior,” Dr Guleria said.

(With IANS inputs)