India may be entering endemic stage of COVID-19, with low or moderate transmission: WHO chief scientist

India may be entering an endemic stage of the COVID-19 pandemic where there is a low or moderate level of transmission going on, said WHO Chief Scientist, Soumya Swaminathan.

The endemic stage of the disease is when a population learns to live with it and is different from an epidemic stage, where the virus overwhelms the population.

World Health Organization Chief Scientist said in an interview, "We may be entering some kind of stage of endemicity where there is low-level transmission or moderate level transmission going on but we are not seeing the kinds of exponential growth and peaks that we saw a few months ago."

It is "very very feasible" that the situation may continue like this with ups and downs in various parts of India, given the size of the nation and heterogeneity of population and immunity status in different parts.

Swaminathan said, "As far as India is concerned that seems to be what is happening and because of the size of India and heterogeneity of population and immunity status in different parts of the country in different pockets, it is very feasible that the situation may continue like this with ups and downs in different parts of the country, particularly where there are more susceptible population, so those groups who were perhaps less affected by first and second waves or those areas with low levels of vaccine coverage we could see peaks and troughs for the next several months."

The WHO scientist said that she hopes that we would be in a position by the end of 2022 where "we have achieved vaccine coverage, say 70 percent, and then countries can get back to normal".

Talking about the clearance of Covaxin, India's first indigenous COVID-19 vaccine by the WHO, she said that she is fairly confident that the health agency's technical group will be satisfied and by mid-September, the Bharat Biotech's vaccine will become one of WHO's authorised vaccines.