Bracing For The Third Wave

On August 29, India reported 43,000 new cases. It should have been a day of relief, considering only three and a half months ago the country was clocking over 400,000 new cases daily.

- Sonali Acharjee

However, health experts remain concerned by the pandemic situation, particularly since 67 per cent of the new cases added on August 29 came from just one state—Kerala. Today, at 209,520, the state has the highest number of active infections in India. Maharashtra, which was for many months the leading state for new infections, has now only a quarter of Kerala’s active infections. Kerala’s numbers are all the more shocking when you compare them to some of the northern states, such as Delhi (375 active cases), Rajasthan (109) and Uttar Pradesh (269).

“There are pockets in the country that remain susceptible to the virus,” says Dr K. Srinath Reddy, chairman, Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). However, letting these pockets have a continued high infectivity rate does pose a risk to the overall management of the pandemic. A new variant or a high number of long Covid cases could once again overwhelm the country’s medical infrastructure.

WHY DO RISING CASES IN KERALA MATTER?

“It is worrying to have such a high number of cases in just one state,” says vaccine expert Dr Gagandeep Kang. The reason, most experts believe, is Kerala’s lowered seropositivity. The latest national survey showed that only 44 per cent of the state’s population had immunity against Covid. In states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan, seropositivity is above 70 per cent.