MAXIMUM ALERT

On December 27, Delhi’s largest Covid hospital, the Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital (LNJP), began a mock drill to prepare for a possible surge in infections in the country.

- Sonali Acharjee

At the time, however, the hospital’s 450bed Covid ward was empty, and in the entire capital, only 14 of over 8,000 Covid beds were occupied.

It is true that India is currently in a comfortable position even as countries like the US, Brazil, Japan, Korea, and especially China, battle a fresh spike in infections on account of the BF.7 Omicron sub-variant. On December 25, India had only 187 new Covid cases, a figure that has not seen any major jumps in the last two months. More importantly, deaths have remained low, too—only two were recorded on December 25, and the preceding week had seen three deaths on average. In contrast, China, after dropping all

Covid restrictions recently, is seeing infections spread like wildfire. Though it has stopped publishing daily case counts, a recently leaked government document hinted that 250 million cases may have been recorded in China in the first 20 days of December 2022. Experts in India, however, are optimistic. The key variant behind the surge in China, the BF7, is already present in India. What is happening in China is due to a different population demographic. In India, we have natural and vaccine-acquired immunity and a larger population of young people. In China, natural immunity has been low and they have a higher share of the elderly. What the world experienced over years, China will now experience in weeks,” says renowned virologist Gagandeep Kang.