The third wave of COVID pandemic is inevitable, alerted K Vijay Raghavan, the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India on Wednesday.
“A third wave is almost inevitable given the higher levels of circulating virus in the country. However, it is not clear on what time scale this phase three will occur. We should prepare for new waves,” Raghavan said.
Shedding light on the transmission of the new strains of the infection he said, “Variants are transmitted same as original strain. It doesn’t have properties of new kinds of transmission. It infects humans in a manner that makes it more transmissible as it gains entry, makes more copies and goes on, same as original.”
He also said that the current vaccines that are effective against the current variants will have to be “updated” to deal with the upcoming new strains. The current variants have overwhelmed the country’s health infrastructure with thousands of people losing their lives to COVID every day.