Covid-19 can’t be eradicated; can only be reduced to an endemic: Experts

News Network
July 3, 2021

Cases of Covid-19 might be declining steadily but as the virus is mutating, attaining that magical zero figure in Delhi is unlikely, experts have said, and predicted that coronavirus will be reduced to an endemic in the future.

The Centre, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his cabinet colleague Satyendar Jain had said last year that one will have to learn to live with the coronavirus and make its prevention norms a part of our lives.

Dr Suresh Kumar, medical director of Delhi government-run LNJP Hospital said there will always be a few cases of the virus.

"Zero is an unlikely figure. The virus is mutating and it is difficult to predict it's future behaviour," he said.

Explaining why the virus has posed such a challenge, Dr Sanjeev K. Singh, Resident Medical Director, Amrita Hospitals in Faridabad said it is an mRNA virus which keeps changing its structure. 

"These virus is smart and just for the sake of living, it will keep mutating. Covid will be there and may not be affecting all 193 countries but it will be there.

"Coming down to zero won't be achievable. In hospitals for getting surgeries, one has to get tested for Hepatitis and HIV. Eventually, you will be tested for Covid too," he said. 

Dr Gauri Agarwal, IVF expert and founder of Seeds of Innocence said keeping the 1918 pandemic as a yardstick, we know that eradicating the virus is an unrealistic possibility.

"As Covid-19 gradually becomes an endemic, likely in 12-24 months, it will probably stop being a statistic that is being watched on a daily basis. Hence, while we may see zero reportable cases, there may never be a time with actual zero cases ever."

Amid concerns over the possibility of a third wave and emergence of the Delta Plus variant, experts assuaged fears of that possible wave being more lethal since a majority of the population has been infected.

"In my view, if a new strain doesn't come up against which the vaccines are not effective, I don't think the third wave will be as lethal as the second wave," said Dr Rajesh Chawla, Senior Pulmonologist, Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals, New Delhi.

He highlighted that coronavirus will become an endemic in days to come.

Agreeing with Chawla, Dr. Rommel Tickoo, Director, Internal Medicine, Max Healthcare, said we are still in the second Covid wave.

"Seventy per cent of the cases are limited to Maharashtra, and southern states. In north Indian states, there was a sudden exponential increase and the virus infected a large number of people together which is why the steady decline.

"The effect of the virus will be blunted because of the majority of people being exposed to the virus and vaccination," he added.

Tickoo said there might be a spike but if the virus doesn't become multi-resistant and undergoes mutations, the third wave won't be as deadly as the second wave and might be lesser in severity than even the first wave.

Delhi had reeled under a brutal second wave with oxygen shortage and unavailability of beds adding to woes of patients. However, in the last few days cases have shown a steady decline with the positivity rate coming down below one per cent. 

On Monday, the city had recorded 59 cases, the lowest single-day rise this year, and two deaths. After that, the cases have hovered around the 90 mark.

Talking about the fluctuations in cases, Dr Gurpreet Sandhu, President, Council for Healthcare and Pharma, said, "On the fluctuation module, we are aware that the testing protocols in India are very abysmal, we do not follow standard protocol of testing.

"Secondly, some people in rural community in India are still not aware about the what vaccine is for, how it will affect them or how it will protect them from the virus."

Experts unanimously vouched for vaccination as the answer to blunt the effect of the virus.

"The effect will be blunted because of the majority of people being exposed to the virus and the vaccination. As the vaccination numbers go up we will be able to blunt the virus impact. More than 50 lakh people have at least received the first while more than 18 lakh have been fully vaccinated," Tickoo said.

However, he said, vaccine hesitancy is becoming problematic. 

"People still give preference to false news. It has the potential to derail our ambitious vaccination programme. Roping in celebrities, credible voices will help it while doctors have a big role to play. In the UK and the US, majority of the population has received their first doses. In the US they have taken off the masks. We should see these examples," he added. 

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News Network
November 18,2024

Advisors to US President-elect Donald Trump have instructed his allies and associates to refrain from using the inflammatory language they previously employed when discussing issues related to migrants and the deportation of asylum seekers, in a bid to avoid “looking like Nazis.”

US media reports said that Trump’s associates had been asked to stop using the word “camps” to describe potential facilities that would be used to accommodate migrants rounded up in deportation operations across the country.

The reports said the US president-elect’s allies had been ordered to stave off such charged terms as they would bring to mind “Nazis,” and be used against Trump.

“I have received some guidance to avoid terms, like ‘camps,’ that can be twisted and used against the president, yes,” one Trump ally told American monthly magazine Rolling Stone.

“Apparently, some people think it makes us look like Nazis.”

The presidential advisers also cautioned surrogates and allies to keep racist terms, which have dogged Trump’s campaign, out of their remarks.

They said with Trump’s heated rhetoric that used to compare undocumented immigrants to “animals” and his slight that they are “poisoning the blood of our country,” detractors did not need to reach too far to find parallels to Nazi Germany.

Stephen Miller, who Trump tapped to be his deputy chief of staff of policy, specifically used the word “camps” to describe holding facilities that he hoped the military could put together for immigrants.

Tom Homan, who served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is chosen by Trump to be in charge of the US borders, was no stranger to such language.

“It’s not gonna be a mass sweep of neighborhoods,” he said in an interview earlier this week. “It’s not gonna be building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous.”

Becoming a little more forthright about the new government’s aggressive deportation plans, Homan likened the early days of the Trump administration to the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“I got three words for them – shock and awe,” he said. “You’re going to see us take this country back.”

Trump made immigration a central element of his 2024 presidential campaign but unlike his first run, which was mainly focused on building a border wall, he has shifted his attention to interior enforcement and the removal of undocumented immigrants already in the United States.

People close to the US president and his aides are laying the groundwork for expanding detention facilities to fulfill his mass deportation campaign promise.

The businessman-turned-politician deported more than 1.5 million people during his first term.

The figure do not include the millions of people turned away at the border under a Covid-era policy enacted by Trump and used during most of Biden’s term.

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News Network
November 10,2024

gazajournalists.jpg

The media office in the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli regime has been waging a genocidal war since last October, says as many as 188 Palestinian journalists have been killed since the onset of the brutal military onslaught.

The office provided the figure on Saturday, naming four journalists as the most recent victims of the onslaught.

It identified the foursome as Zahraa Mohammad Abu Sukheil, Ahmad Mohammad Abu Sukheil, Mustafa Khadr Bahar, and Abdel Rahman Khadr Bahar.

The office said it “strongly condemns the targeting, killing, and assassination of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation and holds it fully responsible for committing this heinous crime.”

“We call on the international community, international organizations, and those involved in journalistic work worldwide to take action against the occupation, pursue it in international courts for its ongoing crimes, and pressure it to halt the genocide and the targeted killings of Palestinian journalists,” it said.

Earlier in the day, the office said the Israeli regime had bombed the tents sheltering journalists and displaced persons at the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital in the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza for the ninth consecutive time.

The atrocity that claimed the lives of two people and injured 26 others came as part of “the genocidal crimes committed by the Israeli occupation army against hospitals, civilians, and displaced persons,” it said.

The media office held the regime and the United States, its biggest ally, as well as other countries aiding the genocide fully responsible for such systematic crimes.

At least 43,552 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and 102,765 others wounded since the launch of the war that followed a retaliatory operation by Gaza’s resistance groups.

The fatalities include 44 people, who were killed across the coastal sliver, in the most recent phase of the military onslaught.

As many as 24 of the victims were killed in the northern part of the territory, where the regime has markedly intensified its deadly attacks for weeks.

They included an eight-year-old child and a five-year-old one, who lost their lives after Israeli warplanes targeted a group of minors filling up jerry cans with water alongside their mother at the Jabalia Refugee camp.

Gaza’s heath ministry, meanwhile, said a number of victims remained under the rubble and in the streets following Israeli airstrikes, saying ambulances and civil defense teams could not reach them due to the sheer extent of the destruction caused by the raids and obstruction caused by the regime.

Also on Saturday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, a United Nations-backed assessment, warned that famine was looming in northern Gaza amid escalated Israeli aggression and the regime’s near-total siege of the targeted areas.

The alert from the Famine Review Committee warned of "an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine occurring, due to the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip."

On October 17, the body projected that the number of people in Gaza facing "catastrophic" food insecurity between November and April 2025 would reach 345,000, or 16 percent of the population.

The IPC report classified that figure as Phase 5 -- a situation when "starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident."

The Israeli military, however, questioned the report's credibility.

"To date, all assessments by the IPC have proven incorrect and inconsistent with the situation on the ground," the army said in a statement, denouncing "partial, biased data and superficial sources with vested interests."

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News Network
November 18,2024

Advisors to US President-elect Donald Trump have instructed his allies and associates to refrain from using the inflammatory language they previously employed when discussing issues related to migrants and the deportation of asylum seekers, in a bid to avoid “looking like Nazis.”

US media reports said that Trump’s associates had been asked to stop using the word “camps” to describe potential facilities that would be used to accommodate migrants rounded up in deportation operations across the country.

The reports said the US president-elect’s allies had been ordered to stave off such charged terms as they would bring to mind “Nazis,” and be used against Trump.

“I have received some guidance to avoid terms, like ‘camps,’ that can be twisted and used against the president, yes,” one Trump ally told American monthly magazine Rolling Stone.

“Apparently, some people think it makes us look like Nazis.”

The presidential advisers also cautioned surrogates and allies to keep racist terms, which have dogged Trump’s campaign, out of their remarks.

They said with Trump’s heated rhetoric that used to compare undocumented immigrants to “animals” and his slight that they are “poisoning the blood of our country,” detractors did not need to reach too far to find parallels to Nazi Germany.

Stephen Miller, who Trump tapped to be his deputy chief of staff of policy, specifically used the word “camps” to describe holding facilities that he hoped the military could put together for immigrants.

Tom Homan, who served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is chosen by Trump to be in charge of the US borders, was no stranger to such language.

“It’s not gonna be a mass sweep of neighborhoods,” he said in an interview earlier this week. “It’s not gonna be building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous.”

Becoming a little more forthright about the new government’s aggressive deportation plans, Homan likened the early days of the Trump administration to the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“I got three words for them – shock and awe,” he said. “You’re going to see us take this country back.”

Trump made immigration a central element of his 2024 presidential campaign but unlike his first run, which was mainly focused on building a border wall, he has shifted his attention to interior enforcement and the removal of undocumented immigrants already in the United States.

People close to the US president and his aides are laying the groundwork for expanding detention facilities to fulfill his mass deportation campaign promise.

The businessman-turned-politician deported more than 1.5 million people during his first term.

The figure do not include the millions of people turned away at the border under a Covid-era policy enacted by Trump and used during most of Biden’s term.

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