COVID in India is moving towards endemic stage; cases will rise, then start reducing: Sources

By Shalini Bhardwaj

New Delhi [India], April 12 : COVID in India is moving towards the endemic stage, stated official sources on Wednesday.

While talking to , an official source said, "COVID in India is moving towards the endemic stage. COVID will rise for the next 10 days, but cases will start reducing. Even though cases are increasing but hospitalisation is low. The current rise in cases is due to the XBB.1.16 variant which is a sub-variant of Omicron."

"However, Omicron sub-lineages are predominant and no new Covid19 variant has been reported so far. The Omicron sub-lineages are more transmissible with less severity," the source added.

Elaborating on the XBB.1.16 variant, the source said, "The XBB.1.16 increased from 21.6 per cent in February to 35.8 per cent in March 2023. But no evidence of an increase in hospitalization or mortality has been reported."

Amidst a gradual spike in COVID19 cases in several states, mock drills were undertaken on April 10 and 11 in a total of 33,685 health facilities, including 28,050 government facilities and 5,635 private health facilities.

The government facilities included government medical colleges, government hospitals, district/civil hospitals, CHCs as well as HWCs and PHCs while the private health facilities included private medical colleges, private hospitals and other private health centres.

Critical medical infrastructure and resources including oxygen beds, isolation beds, ventilators, PSA plants, LMO, Oxygen concentrators, Oxygen cylinders as well as medicines and PPE kits were assessed and medical staff were oriented on the management of COVID19 during the drills.

In preparation for the nationwide mock drill, online training with State and District Surveillance Units was also conducted on April 4,5 and 6, 2023.

These trainings focused on the role to be played by State and District Surveillance Units, data fields to be updated, type of facilities to be covered and details of helpline for States/UTs facing any difficulty in feeding data on COVID19 India Portal.

A total of 1544 participants took part in the preparatory training.