NEW DELHI : Noting that COVID-19 may be heading towards endemicity in India, vaccinologist Dr Gangandeep Kang on Monday said local flare-ups that will be smaller and spread wider across the country may add up to form a third wave of the pandemic, but the scale will not be like before.
The endemic stage is when a population learns to live with a virus. It is very different from the epidemic stage when the virus overwhelms a population.
In an interview with PTI over the COVID-19 situation in India, Kang said after the second wave, maybe a quarter of the country's population continues to be susceptible to the virus. "So will we be able to achieve within that quarter the same numbers and the same patterns that we saw in the second wave?