Living in the Covid shadow

The Covid pathogen has joined the roster of manageable endemic respiratory viruses

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India now has 1,010 active Covid-19 cases nationwide, with Delhi reporting 104 cases as new variants circulate across the country. Similar upticks are emerging across Asia. Yet health authorities, both in India and elsewhere, are responding with routine preparedness rather than emergency mobilisation — an approach that signals how far we've come from pandemic-era thinking.

The current wave represents exactly what endemic respiratory viruses do — circulate, evolve, and surge periodically without triggering a health-system collapse. These variants show no evidence of increased severity, with symptoms resembling common viral illnesses. The upticks stem from waning immunity and normal viral evolution, not fundamentally dangerous new properties.