Is Covid becoming a flu-like illness?

Preventive measures like wearing mask, maintaining distance and vaccination is still very important in preventing spread of any variant of Covid even in the near future. Lastly, with the third wave not showing severe infection in most of the persons who got infected, the corononavirus may be behaving like another flu like illness but, still large data need to be studied in India and abroad to substantiate the practical observations done so far

Is the third wave of pandemic is getting better? It is not as serious as second wave? In this third wave, two variants of concern (voc) and thought of creating severe illness are showing mild impact on the health of individuals especially, in Indian population. Along with the existing Delta variant in the community, Omicron is a new entrant to variant of concern list. Omicron was first identified in South Africa and soon spread across 100 countries. The new variant has unique features of high transmission rate when compared to Delta variant.

The Omicron variant has little effect in India. Since the start of third wave even though number of cases increased, the severity of illness duration has reduced as per practical case studies. The patients are recovering faster and post-Covid sequelae appears to be less in most of the people. Persons who have suffered with Omicron showed mild symptoms, limited to upper respiratory tract and for lesser duration around 5-7 days with no significant post-infection sequelae.

The outcome (severity) of viral infection depends on host immunity and virulence of the organism. The possible reasons for mild infection include better immunity in individuals (already vaccinated) and herd immunity (as the most of the individuals in the community are vaccinated). The virus (Omicron variant) virulence might be less even though transmission rate are high. But not to forget in elder individuals and persons with multiple medical conditions (diabetes, hypertension or heart disease or cancer patients) and unvaccinated individuals the severity of Covid is still there.

Preventive measures like wearing mask, maintaining distance and vaccination is still very important in preventing spread of any variant of Covid even in the near future. Lastly, with the third wave not showing severe infection in most of the persons who got infected, the Corononavirus may be behaving like another flu-like illness, but still large data needs to be studied in India and abroad to substantiate the practical observations done so far.

(The author is Senior Consultant, Internal Medicine, KIMS Hospitals)