State hapless in preventing spread of Omicron cases
- The People's Chronicle Editorial :: January 28, 2022 -

WHETHER or not the Election Commission of India extends the ban on physical poll rallies and road shows beyond January 31 in view of the pandemic situation, it could be safely stated that once the political parties complete formal process of announcing their candidates the pace of campaigning will be intensified, all safety protocols flouted and the state’s health department would simply be reduced to updating on the number of daily infections.

Regardless of the recently observed National Voters’ Day emphasising on making the voters empowered, vigilant, safe and informed, the natural longing to see their chosen candidates win the polls will make it difficult for both the election-conducting authorities and the health department to restrain the electors as the polling days inch closer.

As encouraging active participation of the voters of India and exhorting them to exercise their franchise rights responsibly are keys to any election, it is unlikely that the ECI’s endeavour towards conducting the polls safely in view of the pandemic will have many takers regardless of experts cautioning that the third wave will persist for few more weeks across the country.

Among others, the disturbing aspect of the highly contagious Omicron variant of Covid-19 is a study report that the virus can survive up to eight days on plastic and 21 hours on skin, a much longer period of time than other variants of concern like Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta, as well as the original strain.

According to reports, the study posted on pre-print, and not peer-reviewed yet, analysed the differences in viral environmental stability between the SARS-CoV-2 Wuhan strain and all variants of concern (VOCs).

The findings showed that on plastic and skin surfaces, Alpha, Beta, Delta and Omicron variants exhibited more than two-fold longer survival times than those of the Wuhan strain and maintained infectivity for more than 16 hours on the skin surfaces.

Omicron survived 21.1 hours on skin model from cadavers, followed by the Wuhan virus (8.6 hours), the Gamma (11 hours) and Delta (16.8 hours) variant.

The survival of Alpha (19.6 hours) and Beta (19.1 hours) was found to be similar. The study found that the high environmental stability of these VOCs could increase the risk of contact transmission and ontribute to the spread of VOCs.

Contrary to the study report quoting researchers from the Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine in Japan as saying that the Omicron variant has the highest environmental stability among VOCs, which is one of the factors that have allowed the Omicron variant to replace the Delta variant and spread rapidly, the state’s current policy to tackling the pandemic continues to give emphasis on home isolation of patients for at-least a week, whereas it was around 20 days during the first wave and no less than 10 when the state was in the vicious grip of the Delta variant last year.

With all institutional interventions unable to stop the pandemic, helplessness of the state’s health department to contain transmission of the contagious disease could be comprehended from director K Rajo periodically updating about increase in Omicron cases, since detection of the first cases, only after discharge of the patients and appealing to the public to get vaccinated and strictly follow the safety protocols.