Scientific data not available to suggest Covid pills can be useful at the moment: ICMR

The data suggest that the pills need to be given earlier even before the disease is diagnosed

December 18, 2021

ICMR DG: No scientific data to support anti-viral Covid pills

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Director-General Balram Bhargava said on Friday that the scientific data that is available on anti-viral Covid pills does not support that these medicines will be useful at the moment.

The data suggests that the pills need to be given earlier even before the disease is diagnosed. Bhargava briefed on the present situation of Covid and the new variant Omicron in the country.

He said that it is very important to have low-intensity festivities and avoid non-essential travel and mass gatherings.

Joint Secretary, Health, Luv Agarwal, said that new Covid cases are being reported below 10,000 for the past 20 days. The case positivity for the last 1 week was 0.65 percent. Currently, Kerala contributes 40.31 percent to the total number of active cases in the country, he said.

He said, “India is administering COVID-19 vaccine doses at the highest rate in the world and the daily rate of doses administered is 4.8 times the rate of doses administered in the US and 12.5 times the rate of doses administered in the UK.”

“Total of 101 Omicron cases across 11 states have been reported so far. There is no evidence to suggest that vaccines are not effective against Omicron variant,” he said, adding that it is likely that Omicron will outpace Delta variant where community transmission occurs as per a WHO report.

NITI Aayog’s Member, Health, Dr. V K Paul said: “A new phase of the COVID-19 pandemic is being experienced in Europe with a steep rise in cases.”

About genome sequencing, he said that sequencing every sample is not possible.

“It is a surveillance and pandemic assessment and tracking tool, not a diagnostic tool as of now.”

Today, India logged 7,145 new Coronavirus infections taking the total tally of COVID-19 cases to 3,47,26,049. The number of people who have recuperated from the disease rose to 3,41,71,471 with 8,706 recoveries in the last 24 hours.

[With Inputs from IANS]

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