Dr NK Arora, the head of Covid-19 Task Group in National Immunization Technical Advisory Group (NTAGI), said the fourth Covid wave in India will be driven by a new variant as the stealth Omicron has been seen in 75% of country's population.
NK Arora, the head of Covid-19 Task Group in National Immunization Technical Advisory Group (NTAGI), said the fourth Covid wave will be driven by a different variant since the BA.2 variant has been seen in 75 per cent of the total population.

BA.2, the sublineage of Omicron also known as the stealth variant, had accelerated the third Covid wave in India.

Speaking to India Today, Dr NK Arora said, " The fourth wave will be driven by a new variant since BA.2 is present in 75% of the population. Can't say when India will witness the fourth wave. Vaccines available now do not cover Omicron to the extent that boosters will benefit."

An IIT-Kanpur study predicted the fourth wave of Covid in July this year. Reacting to this, Dr Arora said there are some issues with the study itself. India is not seeing a surge yet as immunity due to natural infection is high in our community, he said.

READ | Experts divided as Centre announces vaccines for 12-14 age group

The yet-to-be peer-reviewed study, recently posted on the preprint repository MedRxiv, used a statistical model to make the prediction, finding that the possible new wave will last for four months.

He also stated that the government will start sampling studies in the coming week on sewage to see whether any new variants of Covid are present in the country.

Further, Dr Arora said seven crore kids in India between the age of 12-14 will be administered vaccines, including 10-15 per cent of kids who are co-morbid. Biological E’s Corbevax will be administered to children in 12-14 years age group. Dr Arora said Corbevax is a safe subunit protein vaccine.

The safety of Corvevax is well established. It is like the Hepatitis vaccine, Arora said.


Source : https://www.indiatoday.in/coronavirus-outbreak/story/fourth-covid-wave-nk-arora-stealth-omicron-vaccination-immunity-kanpur-study-new-variant-1925793-2022-03-15