Team Herald
PANJIM: While the expert committee on the third wave had 12 days ago predicted that this wave would occur by September, Goa Medical College (GMC) Dean Dr Shivanand Bandekar said the committee feels there is a 90 per cent chance that the third wave will come to Goa in a month and a half at the earliest.
The Dean added that the State is exercising caution and not dropping its guard even though the daily COVID positivity rate has gradually dropped to under 20 per cent after the peaks witnessed in April and May.
He reiterated that the expert committee has predicted that the third wave is likely to hit subgroups of the below 18 population, rural areas and peri-urban areas.
He added that the first and second wave had hit the adult population of urban areas and he also felt that there was some herd immunity achieved in the adult population to some extent and that the virus is now looking at finding a new host.
Earlier, the expert committee had linked the drop in cases to the virus exhausting hosts it could find but had warned that the virus could be strengthened again if there are crowded areas, non-compliance of COVID-appropriate behavior, etc, which could eventually lead to another surge in cases.
On another issue, the Dean stated lately there have not been any fresh black fungus cases. He added that the State so far has had 12 black fungus cases, out of which four had passed away. He also revealed that Goa has had no cases of yellow fungus.
Bandekar continued to promote the need for all to get vaccinated, as this can help them be protected from all mutants. He repeated that only few who had taken both the vaccine doses had succumbed to the infection due to their high co-morbid conditions.
Bandekar insisted that he cannot say COVID-19 patients died due to lack of oxygen. He added that these patients were critical and had severe conditions. He said they cannot fix it to one factor (oxygen issue). He also pointed out that now they have all the required oxygen but that still they lose patients, something they have always been trying to avert.
He further rejected speculation about patients dying at night and said there were statistics that showed how deaths occurred across 24 hours and not only at night. He added that deaths have occurred at night in other parts of the country too like Chennai and Hyderabad.
Two new members, President of Indian Association of Paediatrics (IAP) Goa Dr Dhanesh Volvoikar, and Secretary Dr Sumant Prabhudessai, were added to the expert committee on the third wave that held another meeting. Besides the GMC Dean, Director of Health Services Dr Jose D’Sa, State epidemiologist Dr Utkarsh Betodkar and the President of Indian Medical Association (IMA) Goa Dr Vinayak Buwaji, the other members are Dr Mimi Silveira, Dr Jagdish Cacodkar, Dr Ira Almeida, Dr Usgoankar, Dr Harshad Kamat, Dr Virendra Gaonkar, Dr Shivanand Gauns, Dr Altekar, Dr Shekhar Salkar and Dr Rajeshwar Naik.
The committee has worked on ramping up infrastructure, mobilising resources, training programmes and pushing for maximum counselling services for the parents of children who could be affected.
