Covid BF7, You and Work – Lets all live together happily

China Covid Resurgence - When Covid started in China jut before 2020, China enforced Zero Covid Policy which was very strictly enforced leading to people not getting exposed to Covid and not developing immunity. Because of this reason Chinese peole overall have lesser immunity from Covid. This is one of the reasons why we are seeing huge number of infections and reports of high number of deaths.

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?Is the resurgence of Covid only in China ? – Multiple countries are seeing new waves of Covid variant. As per the WHO data, the highest numbers of new weekly cases were reported from Japan (1,046,650 new cases), Republic of Korea (459,811), US (445,424), France (341,136) and Brazil (337,810). Japan?registered 206,943 new cases, marking the first time that the single-day tally has breached the 200,000-mark August 2022. Recently, ?an epidemiologist, Eric Feigl-Ding, warned that over 10 per cent of the world’s population is likely to get infected in the next 90 days. He said the situation in China was alarming and the country was underreporting the deaths due to Covid.?

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New Variant BF7 – The Covid wave is primarily driven b the BF7 variant. As per information gathered so far by World Health Organization (WHO) this latest avatar of Covid is highly infectious father ahead of its earlier cousin Omicron BA.5 variant. Severity of illness is lesser compared to earlier variants, but because it infects in higher numbers, absolute number of death can also be higher.

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Situation here in India –India has reported 4 cases so far for the BA.7 variant. All four cases confirmed so far came up between July and October -- three in Gujarat, one in Odisha -- and the patients were isolated, treated and have recovered. Meanwhile, India has begun genome sequencing of positive case samples to track new variants through Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium(INSACOG)network. India has also made RTPCR tests mandatory for people arriving from China and 4 other high risk countries. Health Ministry is also prepared this time around to deal with other exigencies like shortage of Oxygen, facilities, doctors to treat the surge.

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What do you and I need to do ? – As per multiple experts, majority of Indians have already developed immunity against earlier versions of the virus. Newer version may infect people and cause mild symptoms. Does it mean, we can go about our daily routine without any precautions – No. We must get bac to masks, limiting outside visits and working from home where possible. So, don’t panic and get back to the Covid precautions we have been used to in the last two years. Don’t expect too many workplaces to get back to work from home though. It has been difficult to get employees off that culture. On a lighter note, Covid was nowhere in the news when the FIFA world cup was going on, and now that the IPL is starting in 2 months, it doesn’t have much time to last ;)