Dr. Nikhil Tandon, is Professor in the Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, and Head of Capacity Building at the Centre for Chronic Disease Control in New Delhi.
His research interests include autoimmune thyroid disease which includes thyroid epidemiology, diabetes and metabolic bone disease, and the impact of early life events in adult chronic disease.
In an interview to Swimmi Shrivastava, Dr Tandon talks about precautions everyone, especially people with diabetes and other comorbidities, should take to avoid a surge in the Covid-19 cases during the upcoming festival season.
This second wave had a higher mortality rate, and put a huge pressure on the health system. And when it spread, it also affected people in regions where there was no obvious reason for its an increase in the number of cases. So, even in the absence of any obvious reason for spread, we have to be watchful of subsequent waves, because viral infections such as COVID-19 often have multiple peaks and waves which may be of different severity, may be of different intensity, may be of different durations.
We cannot assume that there will not be another wave even under routine circumstances. Look at countries like Australia or New Zealand, which were quite particular about who will enter the country and who won’t, and had stringent measures in place to prevent congregations. But despite that, there have been waves out there.
So, the first important message is that waves can happen till at least a substantial proportion of our population has been suitably made immune. Second, anything which increases the likelihood of transmissibility, will increase the chances of a surge of infections. Given that this is an airborne infection, crowding will increase the likelihood of its transmission.