No need to panic, India armed with “hybrid immunity” to fight COVID: NTAGI chief  

Even as the Centre and states are prepping up health facilities and taking stock of preparedness to deal with a possible surge of COVID-19 cases, the chief of the Centre’s COVID panel has assured that India was just undergoing “precautionary and pre-emptive” preparations and there was no need to panic as the country is equipped with “hybrid immunity”.

Stating that the preparations are being made in the absence of substantial information on the outbreak coming from China, Dr NK Arora, chairman of the COVID working group of National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI) told a prominent news website, said that it is, however, clear that the spread is not due to just one variant but four of them.

Also read: COVID nasal vaccine to cost Rs 800 in pvt hospitals, Rs 325 in govt clinics

He said BF.7, the Omicron sub-variant to which the outbreak is being attributed only accounts for 15 per cent of the cases while the BN and BQ series are responsible for 50 per cent of the cases and the SVV variant for 10-15 per cent of the infections, Dr Arora said.

He said India is in a safer position in terms of immunity as the masses have developed “hybrid immunity” against variants, both through vaccines and rampant infection during the three waves of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Herd immunity is a complex matter. Let’s not go into that. What we have in India is strong hybrid immunity…India has seen waves after waves of infection and people have got exposure to natural infection,” he said.

He said while in China most have not been exposed to the virus due to the strict lockdown and have received vaccines which are “probably less effective,” around 97 per cent of Indians have received two doses of the vaccines while others have contracted the virus more than once, developing “hybrid immunity” in the process.

Also read: China to lift COVID-19 quarantine for international travellers from Jan 8

He said this includes around 96 per cent of children below 12 years who have developed natural immunity after being exposed to COVID.

“So the calibrated manner in which people were exposed even while the vaccination was going on, we see we are a very safe society from a COVID perspective,” he added.