Covid cases rising in South Asia

Coronavirus cases in Bangladesh surge 115% in one week. Several Indian states nudge to impose fresh restrictions. Pakistan authorises booster doses for citizens over the age of 30.     

These are the developments and immediate responses of the South Asian countries as their infections have been spiking since the last week of December last year – around one month after the detection of the more transmissible coronavirus variant Omicron.          

Yet, available data are too inadequate to conclude whether the newly found strain makes the cases spike this winter, or whether those are the prolonged rampage by deadly coronavirus variant Delta.

India – the epicentre of Delta devastation last summer – Sunday reported 159,632 new Covid-19 cases as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus continues to spread rapidly in the country.

The Indian health ministry reported 327 new deaths, taking the official death toll since the start of the pandemic to 483,790. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was scheduled to chair a meeting to review the pandemic situation later on Sunday, according to Reuters.

In India's neighbouring Bangladesh, health officials Sunday said they detected 6,300 people with Covid in the past one week. The caseload in the previous week was 3,376.

On that day, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina reminded the countrymen about virus safety measures referring to Omicron-led case surges across the globe.    

According to global genomic database GIS AID, Bangladesh sequenced 21 Omicron cases until Sunday. With Omicron cases reported for the first time on 9 December, Dhaka said the Delta and Omicron cases ratio is at 80:20.      

Recent studies suggest that Omicron is less likely to make people seriously ill than the previous Delta variant. But the World Health Organization (WHO) recently warned against describing the Omicron variant as mild, saying it is killing people across the world.

On Saturday, Pakistan's daily Covid cases crossed the 1,500-mark with more than 1,000 seven-day average. The country's infection curve had been downward since October last year, as the authorities warned of a fifth wave of infections.

"There is clear evidence now of a beginning of another COVID wave which has been expected for the last few weeks," Asad Umar, the minister in charge of supervising pandemic operations, wrote on Twitter last week.

Genome sequencing had detected a growing number of cases of the Omicron variant, particularly in the largest city of Karachi, he said.   

Landlocked Nepal reported 696 Covid cases on Saturday while the country's daily caseload had been hovering below 250 in December last year. The Himalayan nation with a vast bordering strip with India confirmed maiden Omicron cases on 7 January this year.

According to the Our World in Data – an initiative for tracking and interpreting global issues into numbers, only 36% of the Nepalese have been inoculated so far.

Despite having around 60% of the population immunised, Covid cases are also increasing in Maldives. The island nation logged 337 new infections on Saturday, which is 16% of the peak Male reported in May last year.

There have been 97,668 infections and 264 coronavirus-related deaths reported in the country since the pandemic began.    

Sri Lanka, the top performer in South Asia in terms of vaccinating 74% of its people so far, seems an exception. Coronavirus cases in the country that lies in the Indian Ocean have been maintaining a fall since October last year.

On Saturday, the country registered 580 cases – less than last week's daily case tally. Sri Lanka so far has sequenced 52 Omicron cases as the country's coronavirus-related deaths stand at 15,099 since the pandemic began.