 Hello and welcome. You're watching Newsmade Easy on NewsClick. I'm Anindya Chakravarty and today I'm going to talk about the third wave. The National Institute of Disaster Management has warned the Indian government that there could be a third wave of COVID in September, October, peaking in October and we need to prepare for it and this is inevitable unless the government ensures that there are enough restrictions, COVID appropriate behavior continues but we know anecdotally that is not happening. There are festivals where people turn up and thousands of people are walking around without masks. Many vaccinated people now believe that they're safe and therefore they've completely given up all COVID protocols. So there is a danger of a third wave coming again. Why is there a danger of third wave coming? Three key reasons. Number one, slow pace of vaccination because in India today just about 10% of people, less than 10% of people have got both doses of the vaccines and one of the recent studies suggests that unless you've got both doses, your chances of being immune to COVID is very low. Let's say that that is an outlier of a study and let's say that your chances improve if you have one dose at least then even then we have only approximately 43% of Indians who have got either one dose of a vaccine or both doses of vaccines. Now that is not a bad number but even then it's not great because it still leaves about 57% of Indians with the potential of catching the disease unless one also takes into account those who've already got COVID and that is something that I'm going to come to later but so here is the number one point that vaccination levels are low in India. Number two, those who got vaccinated their immunity is going to drop over a period of time. Over months it's going to drop and many have got vaccinated early maybe in February, March and then April onwards people have got vaccinated so by October it will be 6 months so their immunity will start dropping and as I said the third thing is variants, new variants. For India one of the side effects of the killer second wave that we saw between April to June was a positive side effect was that a lot of people were already exposed to a variant which is the Delta variant but we know that the Delta plus variant has come and the Delta plus variant is believed to be to have three the reason why doctors and experts are worried about is there's three reasons. Number one, it spreads extremely fast supposedly even faster than Delta and it directly attacks receptors in the lungs and we know in COVID lungs get affected, breathing trouble is one of the big issues in COVID and the number three is that antibodies, monoclonal antibodies are appearing to be less effective against the Delta plus variant so the Delta plus variant could be one major reason if a third wave comes at all. There was a belief that the third wave could affect children the most because children are those who children have not got vaccinated children have not got exposed, schools were shut so even if their parents were going out to work they were shut inside their homes Sero-Service which study whether the level of antibodies in people, Sero-Service done both by AIMS and by ICMR recently they point to the fact that children have got almost as many children have antibodies as adults because as you know the ICMR Sero-Service done in June, July said that 68% of Indians have the antibodies for COVID-19 which means they either had COVID-19 whether they knew it or not whether they had symptoms or asymptomatic whether it was confirmed or not or they got vaccinated and therefore they have these antibodies and ICMR study suggests that children too have a significant number of children also have shown those antibodies and the AIMS study also tells us that children between the age of 2 to 17 they have about 56% of them have these antibodies so effectively children are already exposed whether they got vaccinated or not and we know none of them got vaccinated so 56% of children when this study AIMS study was done in June several months ago at that time already had this was done in four key states already had got exposed to the virus in some way or the other and had developed antibodies for it so that is one reason it is believed that children might not be affected significantly more than adults in the third wave if it comes at all in fact the top body of Indian pediatricians has said that there is no biological reason to believe that children will be affected and the new data suggests that there is no real reason to believe that children will be affected more the only reason why experts believe that children could be affected is because after almost a year schools have reopened in many states especially in states which were badly affected schools have reopened with restrictions but once schools reopen what happens is that children get together they are getting exposed so there is a chance that children will get more children will get affected this time as we have seen in other countries where it has happened now the National Institute of Disaster Management report very clearly tells states to be prepared for this and they say that state governments and the center need to reorient on a war footing those are my words but that is what they mean the way in which they deal with COVID and children now what does that mean that means that equipment for instance scanners oxygen masks those have to be such that they are appropriate for children to use number two in ICUs in most places only one patient can be there but a child cannot be left alone a child needs to be with their parents so the recommendation is to create hospital ICUs and beds where a child can be with one parent so that is another crucial thing changes which have to be made and various state governments have already announced that they are doing it and they are making special arrangements so that children if this comes children with that disease can be easily taken care of we have the experience of the second wave hopefully the third wave will be if it comes at all will be less devastating one more reason for us to believe that is simply because ICMR Cerro Survey which I said told us that 68% of Indians have already got exposed to the virus whether it is through vaccination or through the infection itself and that was done in June July and we are now at the almost at the end of August so that 68% number one adds the number of people who got vaccinated after that that number is creeping closer and closer to that 75-80% now given that 75-80% of people if they have developed antibody that should be close to a herd immunity number I know that many scientists are now saying that herd immunity is not valid for COVID at all but if there is at all a herd immunity number of 80% let's say then I think the data suggests that we are coming close to that whether because we were exposed or whether because there has been vaccination and that is because in many states the level has already reached 80% by June July it was Madhya Pradesh at 79% you know states like Uttar Pradesh had more than 70% various states had more than 70% many states have more than 60% so by now that number is reaching including the fact that there has been a significant amount of at least one dose of vaccine given to people and we should be reaching a space where people are unlikely to get symptoms yes they could pass it on yes they could give it to others but if they don't get infected the chances are that the virus will not be able to spread as well let's hope that happens and let's hope that we can go back to normal life as soon as possible that's the show today keep watching NewsClip and do subscribe to us