90 pc Indians gained natural immunity: SUTRA model

Hyderabad: The natural immunity gained by individuals across the country through Covid infection during the successive Delta and Omicron waves is enough to thwart or dilute any future surge, developers of the noted SUTRA mathematical model for pandemics said. By rough estimates, close to 90% of the population in the country are likely to have […]

Hyderabad: The natural immunity gained by individuals across the country through Covid infection during the successive Delta and Omicron waves is enough to thwart or dilute any future surge, developers of the noted SUTRA mathematical model for pandemics said. By rough estimates, close to 90% of the population in the country are likely to have developed natural immunity to the existing variants of SARS-CoV-2 through the process of natural infection.

The researchers from IIT-Kanpur and IIT-Hyderabad who developed the highly accurate SUTRA model said the impact of Omicron in South Africa and other countries was similar to that of India during the third wave of the pandemic.

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“Omicron was highly infectious and it managed to bypass vaccine immunity. However, it did not bypass natural immunity significantly. Our estimate in India for bypassing natural immunity is 10% to 15%. At the time of Omicron, the natural immunity among the population was around 80%, which played a vital role to make the third wave sharp but short. The same thing happened in South Africa and several other countries which had high natural immunity,” top researcher from SUTRA and IIT-Kanpur Professor Dr Manindra Agrawal said.

National Chair, SERB and Distinguished Chair, IIT-Hyderabad, Dr M Vidyasagar pointed out that a combination of natural immunity and vaccine immunity has definitely provided protection to people during the third wave and will reduce the impact, if any, of the fourth wave.

“After the Omicron-driven third wave, a large section of the population, not only in States like Telangana but across the country, gained natural immunity. The present data across the world clearly indicates that countries with high natural immunity have recovered quickly from the Covid pandemic,” said Dr Vidyasagar, a member of the SUTRA model.

The SUTRA model developers pointed out that due to these conditions, even if there is a fourth wave, it will not last for a long duration.

“This is due to very high levels of natural immunity in the country. A new mutant will need to be highly infectious in order to create a sizable wave, and then it will be very short-lived, just as it has happened for the third wave,” Dr Agrawal pointed out.

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