COVID-19 deaths in Omicron wave lesser than Delta due to higher vaccination coverage: Govt

Representative Image (Image: ANI)

Underlining how the high COVID-19 vaccination coverage may have reduced the severity of the Omicron wave, senior health authorities on March 3 said the case fatality rate in this wave was just 0.35 percent, as compared to 1.29 percent during the Delta wave.

In other words, the deaths due to Omicron infections were over 72 percent lesser, when compared to Delta infection that took India by storm between April-June last year.

The data shared by Lav Agarwal, joint secretary in the Union health ministry in a briefing on COVID-19 situation in the country, showed that the Delta wave mainly lasted for 117 days between March 20 and July 14 last year during which 1,94,31,743 cases and 2, 52, 038 fatalities were recorded.

Also read: Relief as COVID-19 numbers settle to pre-Omicron levels across states

In contrast, between January 4 and February 14, in a span of 42 days when the country saw a third wave of infections triggered by the Omicron variant, 77,42,652 cases and 27,118 deaths, that included backlog deaths, were registered.

Agarwal highlighted that while at the beginning of the second wave just 2.1 percent of the eligible population, which included healthcare and frontline workers, people above 60 and those between 45-59 with co-morbidities, were fully vaccinated, this figure was 65.4 percent of all the adult population at the beginning of the third wave.

With the “whole of government” and “whole of society” approach of the government, the nation has been able to successfully avert a crisis of potentially devastating magnitude as seen in various other nations, said the official.

“The relentless efforts of healthcare and frontline workers coupled with vaccination coverage have yielded results for effective containment of the recent surge,” he added.

Citing data from India’s COVID vaccine tracker, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Director General Dr Balram Bhargava said that in 2022 so far, 92 percent deaths have been recorded in individuals who were not vaccinated against coronavirus.

To arrive at this figure, researchers calculated data from 94,47,09,598 individuals of whom 15,39,37,796 were partially vaccinated, 73,98,46,222 were fully vaccinated and 5,09,25, 580 were unvaccinated.

The findings also showed that while the first dose has a 98.9 percent vaccine effectiveness in mortality prevention, this figure rises to 99.3 percent when an individual is fully vaccinated.

“We have been able to see a mild Omicron wave largely due to our vaccine development process, vaccine acceptance by the majority, a strong political commitment and a robust background of universal immunisation coverage for the last 60 years,” said Bhargava.