New Delhi: Although the country’s Covid-19 cases and deaths per million population are among the lowest in the world, it is too early to say whether Indians have some kind of innate protection against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, especially of the kind afforded by T lymphocytes of the human body, said the ICMR chief Tuesday.
“There are some hypotheses that prior exposure to coronaviruses — there are six of them — grants some T-cell-based immunity. But we cannot say that our numbers are low in India because of that. It is too early to come to such a conclusion,” Dr Balram Bhargava, director general, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), told ThePrint on the sidelines of the weekly Covid-19 briefing.
In the briefing, he stated that the effects of the first CRMC serological survey would likely be published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research within the next two weeks after peer review. However, he also noted that while serological surveys compare antibodies, they estimate the reaction of the body’s T cells.
In a recent study in The Nature, researchers argued that past encounters with endemic coronaviruses could have primed some people to thwart a SARS-CoV-2 infection better because of some attributes in their T Lymphycyte, a class of white blood cells. This and some other findings have now led to the hypothesis that while the disease is infectious, not everybody is equally vulnerable to it.
Bhargava also said that there is very little difference in the three strains of the virus currently circulating in the country — from Wuhan, Italy and Iran returnees.
“The strain of the virus was tested at the National Institute of Virology and we found that it was similar: 99.96%. There is literature that says a mutation is occurring, but very light. For a virus to mute and become absolutely different, it takes 10 to 50 years. So far, there have been no primary changes, ” he said.
Read also: T cells, B cells and the diversity of the human body’s immune reaction: a decoder
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Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan ruled out any chances of underestimation of Covid deaths citing the fact that a very high proportion of the tests have happened in cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai, where both registrations of deaths and medical certification of deaths are way higher than the national average.
“When we say that deaths are not reported in Covid, it is a mere conjecture. In the initial phase, the ministry issued transparent rules taking into account WHO rules … how to report deaths. First we discovered some states that do not report greedy deaths of compressed patients. So we cleared that up. The challenge of the moment (is) that maximum deaths come from express urban areas, where even the record of deaths is generally very high.
“In Maharashtra, the death record is 93%, it is 100 percent constant in Tamil Nadu and Delhi. The national average is 80% of death record. The consistent percentage of medically qualified deaths in total registered deaths is 22% nationally.” In Maharashtra it is 67 consistent with the penny, in Delhi it is 69 consistent with the penny, in Tamil Nadu is 85 consistent with the penny. In such a scenario, saying that deaths are not reported is absolutely unjustified,” Bhushan said.
In recent days, there have been a number of reports in foreign media on the alleged undervaluation of Covid’s deaths in India. An organization of more than 230 public fitness professionals, epidemiologists and activists has called for the publication of knowledge on all deaths recorded in India since 2018.
Broadly 68 per cent of Covid deaths in India are males. Of the total deaths, 50 per cent deaths are of people aged 60 years and 37 per cent are of people aged 45-60 years.
Also read: Delhi, Mumbai & Chennai infection rates dip below 1, India’s overall R value now at 1.16
Bhushan said that the virus is spreading to new areas in India but 66 per cent of cases continue to be in 50 districts and 82 per cent in 10 states.
India has been pushing its testing numbers intermittently over the past few days and aims to eventually to test 10 lakh cases daily. However, Bhushan said in the briefing, “Last week India’s positivity was 11 per cent. This means that there are some states where the positivity rate remains above 10 per cent and these need more attention.”
Bhargava clarified that the two situations in which a country needs to push up testing are when it is below the WHO prescribed target of 140 tests per lakh population or if the positivity rate is above 10 per cent. India’s daily positivity rate was above 10 per cent the last three days, but fell to 7.8 per cent Tuesday.
With respect to antigenic testing (RATS), Bhargava stated that about 25-30% of the tests performed are RAT. If a symptomatic patient tests negative in RAT, their samples are verified on an RT-PCR test.
Defending the strategy, the ICMR head said, “In the first five days of infection, chances of an RT-PCR coming negative are very high too.”
The availability of a Covid vaccine, Bhargava said, is only a scientific issue but also of sociocultural commitment.
“You don’t have an express medicine or vaccine yet. (He) desire for a vaccine is gigantic and urgent. But there’s a dilemma. The pandemic is progressing rapidly. The progression of a vaccine takes time not only from a clinical point of view, but also from a social, cultural and regulatory aspect,” he said.
“We have three vaccines in trials. The first is the Bharat Biotech vaccine that completed Phase I study in 11 sites and started on Phase II. For the DNA vaccine of Zydus, India has completed Phase I and moved to Phase II in 11 sites. The third vaccine got approval yesterday (Monday) and is the recombinant Oxford vaccine that was approved for Phase II and III trials that are starting in 17 sites,” Bhargava said.
The immediate concerns after a vaccine is developed are fair distribution, cold chain, stockpiling and training of people, he added.
Also read: 800 new deaths in 24 hours, India infection rate down to 7.8%, daily testing crosses 6.6 lakh
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