 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. The spread of COVID-19 continues unabated across the world. The number of cases concerned are mostly listed as country-wise tallies, and we have seen some record surges over the past few weeks. However, our total case number is the right way to understand the spread of COVID-19. Do they give a comprehensive enough picture? There is also fresh news on the vaccine front. The developers of CorbiVax have waived patent rights, which may enable easier technology transfer across the world. However, this is only part of the process of deploying a vaccine. Immunologist Dr. Satyajit Rat addresses these questions. So this week, there are two major developments to discuss in the COVID-19 pandemic scenario. One of them is what is the current trajectory of the Omicron fuel rise in outbreaks and in infection numbers? And the other is more recent news on the vaccine front. So as far as the rise in so-called case numbers is concerned, I think it's time for all of us across the world to acknowledge that we are no longer dealing with case numbers in the sense of numbers of people who are actually ill with COVID-19, but much more with identified infection numbers. Secondly, the identified infection numbers, the absolute numbers, which everybody is now watching as though it was a stock exchange index, begin to acquire less and less significance in part because it doesn't reflect the number of people who are seriously sick in part because it depends on how many people are being tested in the first place. And this is beginning to vary even more now than it has been over the past three years. And as a consequence, I think it's time to appreciate the fact that what we really need to be looking at in terms of identified infection numbers is not absolute numbers, but in local areas, whether a statistically reasonable number of tests is being regularly done or not, and then within that statistically reasonable number of tests done on a daily basis, what the test positivity rate for detecting SARS-CoV-2 the virus is. Because not because we are worried about whether these people are necessarily ill or not, but because as test positivity rates in daily testing begins to rise, we know from the past two years of experience that the hospital admissions and pressure on intensive and critical care facilities, medical facilities is going to increase, and therefore policies need to be put in place, hopefully a little preemptively with a little bit of breathing space. And therefore, local, regional, authorities, civil society groups, citizens groups need to be demanding an adequate sampling on a daily basis of testing. And I kept on the test positivity rate in conjunction with the occupancy rates for critical care facilities with intensive care unit beds and so on and so forth, so that flexible public health policies can be adopted, suited and adopted to changing circumstances. That's one major issue. The second issue is, and an Indian example is perhaps worth quoting in this context, that as with previous so-called waves, the Omicron fuel wave is not leading to uniform increases in case numbers across the country. In India, for example, the major metropolitan centers where the outbreaks first began in Mumbai and Delhi have now already begun to show stabilizations and falls, whereas in the rest of the country, in the hinterland as as as spread happens, local expansions in countries and in cities in the hinterland is beginning to take place. So we are going to see moving outbreaks. And in this context, it's important to think about vaccinating healthcare workers across countries uniformly, not because this is going to help the initial centers where case numbers are exploded. That's already taken place, but because in the other centers where the infection is spreading from the initial points of infection, healthcare workers, if they are vaccinated additionally today, with booster doses, with precautionary doses, whatever you call them, the short-term gain in antibody levels that provides for some measure of protection for them may well help in reducing healthcare workers' examples of becoming infected and dropping out of hospitals and healthcare facilities, therefore, straining healthcare facilities even further. In all of this, therefore, vaccine supplies remain a major issue. And in global news, the news that has come up, the announcement that is being reported in news media across the world that Peter Hotez and Maria Botatso at the Baylor College of Medicine in the United States have stated that Corbevax, the protein subunit vaccine that they've been working on, will not be patented. That technology is available to anybody, any manufacturer across the world, who can grow the traditional yeast, bio-fermented cultures and extract protein and fold it and package it formulated as a vaccine. Corbevax trials, we have not yet seen the clinical results in publication as yet, but they have been claimed to show unsurprisingly and not at all unexpectedly the same amount of protection that all the other approved vaccines are showing. In fact, India has already given regulatory approval to Corbevax because biological E and local private sector biologics manufacturer in India in Hyderabad is already manufacturing this under agreement with the Baylor College of Medicine. Having the patent barrier removed is a major step. Having it removed for an old tried and tested technology such as the protein, the common and protein technology is also useful. We should keep in mind that the Cuban vaccines, the Abdullah vaccine and the Soberana vaccine have been made in very similar technologies, have proven in Cuban clinical trials to be useful and have been used to cover the Cuban adult population with full vaccination. However, it also remains true that the Novavax vaccine which in India is being carried through regulatory approvals as Corbevax by the Salem Institute of India has hit repeated roadblocks in part because folding these viral proteins made in the unnatural conditions of yeast has always been something of a problem. It's not a huge problem, but it is a problem nonetheless. So transferring technology is easy, but optimizing if the finicky step of protein folding remains a bit of a challenge and therefore patent barrier removal is only one part of the story. The other parts of the story that will take forward the availability of cheap and accessible vaccines in adequate supply across the world still remain to be addressed case by case by case. However, the fact is that these kinds of vaccines, the protein technology vaccines, as I said, Novavax is Corbevax, Baylor's Corbevax, the Cuban Abdullah and Soberana vaccines, there are Indian candidates of these kinds in development as well, have the potential to be the future of widespread vaccination and patent barrier removal is very much a step in the right direction so much for this week.