COVID PANDEMIC WILL TURN TO ENDEMIC BY MARCH 11 :Top Govt Scientist

(The Quiver) : Head of Indian Council of Medical Research’s Epidemiological Department Samiran Panda declared that Covid-19 will become endemic by March 11. Our mathematical projection shows the Omicron wave will last three months starting December 11.

“From March 11, we will see some respite. We need to wait two more weeks to say if Delhi and Mumbai have reached their peaks of Covid cases and if the worst is over. We can’t establish a trend like that in a few days,” he said.

“We can’t say that right now even with the decline in cases and positivity [in Delhi and Mumbai],” he further added. Panda declared that Delhi and Mumbai have a roughly 80:20 ratio for Omicron and Delta variants of coronavirus.

Different states are in different stages of the pandemic and the ICMR has also changed its testing strategy because of the epidemiological variations in the virus and the pandemic changing its course.

Speaking about the genomic sequencing, he said: “Genomic sequencing is a dynamic phenomenon. But genomic sequencing on a dead body to understand if he had Omicron is a simplistic argument. Many patients die of underlying conditions. Yes, we are studying infections in hospitals to understand the severity.”