India's COVID Spike and Plummet. What We Have Learned.

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Tue, 2021-11-02 00:58 — mike kraft

India's COVID Spike and Plummet. What Have We Learned? Experts discuss the country's second deadly wave Shannon Firth medpagetoday

The severity of India's second COVID-19 wave took the world by surprise. Cases skyrocketed, at one point accounting for roughly half of the total infections reported globally. Then, almost as quickly, the numbers plunged.

MedPage Today spoke with experts on the ground in India and in the U.S. to better understand the dynamics of India's COVID curve, and to find out what lessons other countries can learn from its experience.

All of the physicians and public health experts who responded to our inquiries agreed that one of the primary reasons the virus dissipated so quickly after the second wave was that it simply had nowhere left to go.

The "virus inferno" is how Bhramar Mukherjee, PhD, of the University of Michigan School of Public Health in Ann Arbor, refers to India's second wave, which hit before the country had a chance to fully roll out vaccination.

Seroprevalence surveys at the end of June found that roughly 70% of the Indian population had SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, said Mukherjee, which can only mean that those antibodies were the result of past infection. At that time, India had vaccinated only about 2% of its population. In the U.S., seroprevalence rates were closer to about one in three Americans prior to vaccination, she noted.

During the second wave, the country witnessed a "very sharp spike and fall," which, as seen in other outbreaks, often occurs after the virus returns with a mutation that is more transmissible, in this case, of course, being the Delta variant, she continued.

At the same time, human behavior grew more lax, said Mukherjee. ...

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