 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Number of COVID-19 cases continues to rise across the world, with the Omicron variant believed to be the major reason. On December 28, the US recorded over 310,000 cases, while France saw close to 180,000 cases. Other European countries such as the UK, Italy and Spain have also been hard hit. Meanwhile, the situation in South Africa, which had seen a spike in cases, has improved now. The data is still coming on the patterns of the Omicron variant, but at least some experts have expressed the hope that it could be less devastating than the Delta variant. Meanwhile, a number of countries, including India, have given emergency authorizations to vaccines and antiviral drugs. Immunologist Dr. Satyajit Rath analyses the latest developments. So let's start with what the current status of the spread of the Omicron strain of the COVID virus is. Clearly, there have been more bits and pieces of evidence added about Omicron, both globally and in India. Globally, two issues seem to be emerging. The first issue that seems to be emerging more and more clearly in South Africa is a steady reduction in case numbers, Omicron case numbers, COVID case numbers. It's almost as though case numbers have gone up very rapidly with extremely rapid transmission, but they're also coming down perhaps not exactly at the same rate, but at a fairly rapid rate. Whether this is going to be the case elsewhere or not is still quite unclear. Case numbers are going up in many other parts of the world, particularly in Europe and North America. Also, in other South African countries, Southern African countries outside South Africa, case numbers are still going up. So it's a little unclear whether the somewhat hopeful possibility that an Omicron case number spike may be relatively short in duration is going to be a general experience or not. The second issue that's emerging on the Omicron front is also starting from South African experiences that while case numbers are rising, hospitalization requirements for intensive care and deaths are not rising at anywhere near the same rate, implying that in these communities, the Omicron strain is not causing severe COVID illness to the extent that earlier strains were causing. And this experience from South Africa is also being borne out by experiences in Britain and to a somewhat more uncertain extent by experiences elsewhere in the world. If that holds, then that is a, again, somewhat modestly hopeful component of how we are going to deal with and how we are going to be able to deal with the Omicron spike. So that's as far as Omicron related issues worldwide are concerned. An India-specific recent development is that India has approved with great rapidity the two more vaccines for emergency use approval and has also approved an oral antiviral drug for COVID treatment for emergency usage. This is on the background of India's particular Omicron related situation, which is a peculiar mix. India's COVID case numbers are not rising dramatically as yet. India's number of Omicron cases identified is rising steadily, but those are small numbers. Now, a technical reason why they are small numbers is that Omicron can only be identified within the total number of COVID cases by full virus genome sequencing or by specific tailor-made testing. And that's being done in a very, very small percentage of total samples. The data uploading, data transparency, data comprehensibility is still somewhat confused and limited. So it's a little unclear what proportion of India's COVID cases currently are Omicron and even more at what rate Omicron is spreading locally in various localities in India. But the fact still remains that India's total COVID case numbers, which includes Omicron numbers, is not rising particularly dramatically as yet. This is, of course, quite possible to argue is the lull before the storm, but for what it is worth, this is where India is at the moment. Yet, India has made major policy interventions. One policy intervention, which is much more a matter of visibly doing something rather than necessarily having effect is, as an example, the night curfew is declared by local authorities, especially metropolitan authorities across the country. It's not quite clear that night curfews prohibiting movements of anybody are dramatically useful in curbing respiratory virus transmissions, but it certainly underlines the fact that governments, both local, state and national, are taking the matter seriously and it conveys the impression that this is a serious matter. There are downsides to it that we need to be worried about as well. In addition to that, as I pointed out, there is approval for two vaccines and an overdrive. The two vaccines, interestingly, are vaccines that are from a totally different vaccine technology platform, that of recombinant pure protein-based vaccines. Kovavax, which is the Novavax vaccine manufactured by the Salem Institute of India here, and Korbavax, which is from the Baylor College of Medicine in the USA, developed locally in India biologically and called Korbavax. Both of these have been given emergency approval. This brings India's emergency use approved vaccines for COVID up to six, even though they are the first two protein-based vaccines. Monopiravir is the first oral antiviral drug to be given emergency approval for COVID in India. And a common problem going forward with all of these emergency use approvals is that emergency use approval is one step. But the real issue is, what comes after? Do these approved vaccines actually reach the people? Six months ago, India approved Sputnik V. That's still not in widespread usage. Three months ago, three odd months ago, India approved an indigenous vaccine, the Zykoff D, from Zydus Cadilla. That's again in very, very scattered and very small number usage. Really, the question therefore is, can these two new vaccines, can this oral drug, which will prove an extremely useful instrument for dealing with emerging strains of the COVID virus, be made available through manufacturing and distribution and pricing in affordable accessible terms to make a difference to the pandemic? That's what all of us are going to be tracking as we go forward. That's it for the week.