India witnessed exponential increase of SARS-CoV-2 cases from March: NTAGI

New Delhi: A crucial meeting of the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI) chaired by Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhusan has pointed out that there was an exponential increase of SARS-CoV-2 cases from March 1 onwards. It was observed that from March 15 onwards, the case incidence was one per 100,000 population per day, and increased highest to 28.5 on May 7. On May 6, it was around 17 cases per 100,000 population.

The meeting that took place recently along with members of Niti Aayog has further found that the death trends followed similar patterns and increased during this period of April and May. Talking about the vaccine scenario, the Chairman of the Covid-19 working group Dr NK Arora noted that not many countries are using the AZD1222/Covishield vaccine.

Following the increase of vaccine interval for Covishield, it was also recommended in the meeting to establish a national vaccine tracking platform to determine the impact of Covid19 vaccines and track breakthrough infections. It may be mentioned here that breakthrough infections are those infections, which occurred two weeks after getting the second dose or full schedule of the vaccine.

It is recommended that a randomised trial of varying dose intervals of Covishield and other vaccines as they come in should be planned and immediately embedded in the proposed study and the manufacturer should be asked to do the study. "ICMR is currently doing the harmonisation works for different administrative data, including RT PCR data, the disease data, and genomic surveillance data. Once these all are harmonised, it would provide a very close look at what is happening on the ground on a real-time basis," the meeting noted.

Significantly, the issue of Rapid Antigen testing prior to Covid-19 vaccination was rejected by the expert group following the reason that it will lead to huge physical burden and accumulation and breakage of all Covid-19 appropriate behaviour at immunisation centres. Besides Rapid Antigen test has a very low sensitivity. "Even if a vaccine is given, there is no data to suggest that it alters the course of the disease or make it more serious or changing the course of the disease," the meeting of the Covid19 working group noted.