Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

[jayakris]

What do the forum members advise about the second booster shot? That is shot number 4 if one is planning to travel to India in May?

Just get the booster. Don't even think about it. Looks like we will need to keep taking it every 6 months, as of now. Maybe by the end of this year, we may become sure that the further waves are all mild and that we can stop bothering about it... But we need to be careful for the conceivable future.

My daughter (23 year old) in Chicago got Covid and has not turned negative after 10 days. She had a pretty tough time with badly hurting tonsils and unable to eat much for 2 or 3 days. She had taken both doses and a booster shot 5 months ago. It is till hitting people, and it still can be nasty. Just not worth the trouble. Vaccines may not stop it, but without the vaccine shots it could be even worse.

The current wave will almost surely be there in May in India and could even be peaking in late May. Taking a vaccine booster is prudent.

[Atithee]

^^^
Thanks, Jay.

[prasen9]

Unless you are immuno-compromised, the fourth shot would be rather useless. In Israel, a large study showed that the fourth booster stayed only for 2-3 months at max for normal people. I think if you are over 60, your natural immunity, etc. is lower and then you should. Otherwise, it is not of much use. I have mild asthma. But, even for me, the second booster is not that much useful as of now. This is what my doctor says is the evidence as of now and I have done some search to verify that. But, I used to get one infection a month in the winter months. The covid years (last two years) I had none thanks to staying indoors and masks. But, this year, we are teaching in person and I already had one severe infection resulting in pneumonia! No covid yet though, thank god. But, I have been advised to take the second booster late this coming fall, and not now. And, by then, we will have more conclusive data about the efficacy or lack thereof of the second booster. Or, we may have a different second booster more attuned to the mutations that are most prevalent then a la flu vaccine.

There is some conjecture about our immune system being stimulated too often and that not being a good thing but no solid data yet to prove that either way.

[Atithee]

^^^
Thanks, Prasen. Considering only because of the rapid rise in Delhi, and new variant.

[jayakris]

Here are the numbers for Wednesday, Apr 20th: ANI 0, AP 1, ARP 0, ASM 2, BIH 3, CHD 3, CHG 5, DNHDD 0, DEL 1009, Goa 5, GUJ 13, HAR 310, HP 14, J&K 1, JH 4, KAR 61, KER 355, LDK 3, LKS 0, MP 6, MAH 162, MNP 2, MEG 1, MIZ 125, NAG 0, ODI 8, PUD 0, PUN 30, RAJ 25, SKM 0, TN 31, TEL 20, TPR 0, UK 7, UP 168, WB 28

That is +2402 on Wednesday which raises our average by +165 to 2402... There were 3 deaths, and KER added 53 old deaths to it.

Now Kerala is also rising, as is Maharashtra. The Capital region is around 1400+ but outside of Delhi area and Kerala, there are about 600+ cases so there is a rise all over India too. This wave is totally on, and it is an all-India wave; there is no doubt. I have no clue how high the wave will rise, and what precise variant is spreading.

[suresh]

Some numbers for 21/4/2022 Thursday

DL - ?? (Masks made compulsory)
HA - 367 (4%, Gurgaon 289, Faridabad 62)
UP - 205
MA - 179
MZ - 103 (5.4%)
KA - 100 (0.8%)
TN - 39

[jayakris]

A couple of articles on the subvariants found in the Delhi area, with conflicting info. Insacog says one thing, and "sources" say something else. So is it B.2.12 or B.12.1? Whatever... Insacog has been fairly useless in properly telling us anything on time, and preparing the country.

Omicron sub-variant BA.2.12 found in majority of Delhi samples, could be behind surge: Sources (Tribune India)

Delhi labs detect new Omicron sub-variant, INSACOG yet to confirm (Indian Express)

We are already 3 or 4 weeks since the new wave's spread started (Delhi numbers showed up some 12 days ago, so it has been on for a while) -- and we are taking no measures anywhere. At least have a two-week mask mandate nationally (or recommend it to states), and put a quicker stop to this wave. Get people to pay attention. Nobody knows that a 4th wave is fully on, and ICMR, INSACOG, Central ministry and key states like Kerala and Maharashtra are all simply sleeping. The ICMR know-it-alls even say stupid things like there is no wave. WHAT THE HELL is wrong with these people? Horrible.

Will somebody take charge and tell the country to get careful? Put the mask mandate back in, EVERYWHERE. It is not even that badly opposed by Indians. Jeez. Pathetic.

Meanwhile 12 IIT-M students have come down with Covid today, it seems?

[jayakris]

Numbers for Apr 21st, Thursday - ANI 0, AP 1, ARP 0, ASM 0, BIH 2, CHD 6, CHG 3, DNHDD 0, DEL 965, Goa 4, GUJ 19, HAR 367, HP 11, J&K 10, JH 7, KAR 100, KER 332, LDK 0, LKS 0, MP 15, MAH 179, MNP 2, MEG 0, MIZ 103, NAG 0, ODI 9, PUD 0, PUN 21, RAJ 14, SKM 0, TN 39, TEL 17, TPR 0, UK 6, UP 205, WB 26

That is +2463 which raises the seven-day average +186 to 1714... There were 7 deaths (one each in Delhi, Guj, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Punjab, Mizoram, Uttarakhand) and KER added 48 old ones.

So Karnataka also officially joins the Delhi region, Maharashtra and Kerala in showing a (rather sedate?) start of a wave. But the Delhi area wave has not blown up like I was fearing, in the last couple of days. It is going up but not exploding... Maybe. Is that a good sign? Too early to say.

[jayakris]

Numbers for Apr 22, Friday: ANI 0, AP 4, ARP 0, ASM 0, BIH 4, CHD 6, CHG 0, DNHDD 0, DEL 1042, Goa 1, GUJ 11, HAR 385, HP 7, J&K 9, JH 3, KAR 90, KER 315, LDK 1, LKS 0, MP 11, MAH 121, MNP 0, MEG 1, MIZ 91, NAG 0, ODI 11, PUD 0, PUN 31, RAJ 34, SKM 1, TN 57, TEL 32, TPR 0, UK 11, UP 187, WB 40

That is a +2,506 nationally, which raises the average by +189 to 1903... There were 2 deaths (both in Delhi) and KER added 31 old deaths to the count.

The wave is still showing only a "rather sedate" growth everywhere. But the numbers are going up everywhere. The number of active cases in the country have gone up from 10.5K to 15K in the last 10 days or so.

[suresh]

Ravi
@mravi39512029
#TamilNadu new #COVID19 cases and positive rate slightly dropped from yesterday. Active cases crossed 300 today. No deaths reported for 36th day.

New Cases=53
Recovery=29
Tests:18214
Active=310
TPR=0.29%
#Chennai =36 (25 new cases reported from IIT Cluster)

55 active cases on campus. One hostel (Mandakini) has been isolated.

With another 25 persons testing positive for COVID-19 at IIT-Madras campus, an analysis showed that a cluster of cases has surfaced at Mandakini hostel. The test positivity rate of the samples tested on the campus was 3.8%, according to Health Secretary J. Radhakrishnan.

“Excluding Chennai, freshers from 13 States had arrived here recently. One suspicion is that one of them could have been infected, resulting in the spread of infection to others. Nevertheless, this is a pandemic. Other than looking at the source of infection, what is more important is preventing further spread. This is why we have taken up suppression testing. Testing is progressing in all 19 hostels on campus,” he told reporters on Saturday.

As COVID-19 cases started to increase at IIT-Madras, the Health Department took up “suppression testing” to test all.

So far, 1,420 persons were tested, of which 55 were found positive, he said.

https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/t ... 349968.ece

[jayakris]

^^^ Good to see them testing everybody quickly enough. That is the way to go when a wave starts.

Here are the numbers for Saturday, Apr 23rd - ANI 1, AP 2, ARP 0, ASM 1, BIH 4, CHD 7, CHG 5, DNHDD 0, DEL 1094, Goa 2, GUJ 8, HAR 334, HP 7, J&K 3, JH 5, KAR 139, KER 300, LDK 0, LKS 0, MP 21, MAH 194, MNP 5, MEG 1, MIZ 112, NAG 0, ODI 1, PUD 0, PUN 15, RAJ 18, SKM 0, TN 53, TEL 31, TPR 0, UK 9, UP 225, WB 31

That is +2,628 which raises the average +192 to 2,095... There were 6 deaths; 2 in DEL and 1 each in JH, MAH, UP and WB... Kerala added 38 old ones...

Our total numbers are: 43,057,468 cases, 522,193 deaths, 42,517,670 recoveries, and 15,883 active cases

[Kumar]

We need to focus on the booster shots for elderly. Just 25 million people have gotten booster shots. Ithink we will start seeing more cases, as the vaccination effects starts to fade away. India’s longer vaccination cycle meant that we had substantial portion of population that were vaccinated in the past 8 weeks . This pretty much acted as short circuit for omicron wave.

My guess is that that only 10% of people are getting tested in india and this is only going to go down further.

Travel back to india for summer vacation (from abroad) is expected to be return to close to normal this year. We will probably see a huge spike in June-August timeframe as qell.

[suresh]

We need to focus on the booster shots for elderly. Just 25 million people have gotten booster shots. Ithink we will start seeing more cases, as the vaccination effects starts to fade away. India’s longer vaccination cycle meant that we had substantial portion of population that were vaccinated in the past 8 weeks . This pretty much acted as short circuit for omicron wave.

Free precautionary does for everyone above 18 has started. I expect an upswing in vaccination numbers starting around now. I just got my (paid) booster a few days back. It was almost one year after I took my second dose. Officially, they are allowing people who have completed 9 months since their second dose. No mixing of vaccines.

[jayakris]

What is the CFR of the common cold and all that? I was looking at the reported Covid data from a couple of countries that give reliable numbers (not too far from what Excess Death research shows, and it seems to be under 0.25% in most developed countries.

Korea (which is a special case of a big wave that happened only under Omicron, and under high vaccination rates too). It is 17M cases (all in the last 2-3 months!) and 22K deaths, which give a CRR of 0.13% ... GER has a 0.55% CFR but most of that is from the earlier time without vaccination and against the tougher strains Alpha/Delta. Germany seems to be running at around 0.15% now...

The one Indian place with near-developed-country hospital care (Kerala) has messed up numbers due to adding old deaths on appeal etc, but overall, KER is at 1.00% (68K deaths from 6.5M cases), though the numbers lately are probably in the 0.25% range on deaths.

At say 0.25% CFR under repeated vaccinations, Is Covid sufficiently close to our traditional flu?

[prasen9]

You mean you guys are going to shut down the thread?

It was not until the end of last year. Comparison article Now, I do not know. Maybe it is getting to be about the same. But, the real test may be during the winter season in the northern hemisphere (where most of the world's population is).

Here is another article that came out last month that says we are far from victory.