NEW DELHI: After weeks of cautious reopening, the world is forced to raise its Covid defences again due to the spread of the Omicron variant of coronavirus.
The new variant, first found in southern Africa, has now spread to over a dozen more countries and is said to carry “concerning” mutations that may make it more transmissible and allow it to evade immunity provided by vaccines.

Is India in the danger zone?
While India is yet to report its first case of Omicron, several states have started reimposing local-level restrictions to keep the threat at bay. The Centre, meanwhile, has urged states to boost vaccinations and testing while redrawing SOPs for all international arrivals.
So far, there has been no noticeable uptick in daily new cases either. On Monday, India reported just 8,309 new infections.

Not much is known about the real-world impact of Omicron except that it could lead to reinfection among those who have already had Covid and is likely to be more contagious.
It is also not known whether the new variant can lead to a more severe form of Covid. In fact, South African medical experts said that Omicron causes symptoms that are milder compared to Delta.
Amid uncertainty over the future course of Omicron, scientists across the world are racing to find out whether the available vaccines are effective against Omicron.
Several experts believe that Covid vaccines that are in use should work against Omicron as well.
A top South African infectious disease expert said on Monday that existing vaccines should be highly effective at preventing severe disease and hospitalisation from Omicron.
Professor Salim Abdool Karim, who served as the government’s chief adviser during the initial response to the pandemic, also said it was too early to say whether Omicron led to more severe clinical symptoms than previous variants.
Experts in India agree that vaccines are the best hope against the new variant.
“The most important tool against this variant is to follow Covid-19 appropriate health guidelines and getting vaccinated. Vaccines should provide at least partial protection against progression of the infection to severe Covid,” Upasana Ray, a senior scientist at Kolkata’s CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, told PTI.

Public policy expert Chandrakant Lahariya said while the need for more neutralising antibodies against the variant or a reduction in vaccine effectiveness is a possibility, there is every reason to believe that vaccines are still going to work.
But if vaccine-induced protection does minimise the threat caused by the new variant, India continues to be in a precarious position.
According to ourworldindata.org, just over 31% of India’s population is fully vaccinated against Covid.

A state-level look at the vaccination coverage shows that several regions in India are still vulnerable to the virus in case a mutated variant spreads rapidly.
Vaccination coverage is still low in highly populous states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal.
In Maharashtra, the worst-hit state, over two-third of the population does not have vaccine immunity.
Other states like Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Punjab are also lagging in terms of vaccination coverage.
Notably, states like Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh faced the brunt of the second wave which was fueled by the highly transmissible Delta variant.