Opinion: On Omicron, Airports In India Show How Wrong We're Getting It

These are incredulous scenes of "crowds" made up of passengers arriving at Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai after the new travel guidelines were issued a few days ago in view of the emergence of the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus. Passengers landing from "at-risk" countries are to undergo RTPCR Covid-19 detection tests (they have two options) at the airport, and they cannot leave the airport until they get their test results which can take from 2 to 6 hours. It is hard to believe that no expert or planner anticipated this crowding that violates every tenet of social distancing norms. Yet, apparently either they did not or they did but do not care.

Here is a simple question: If the Omicron variant is thrice as transmissible as the Delta variant - as is suggested tentatively by the existing data - why are we putting so many people in one holding area? Will this not ensure that many uninfected people may actually get the infection? Kiran Shaw Majumdar mentioned this issue sharply in her tweet.

The paramount concern at airports, should be to get people out of there faster, with more counters and personnel to help. The objective should be to keep the density of people as low as possible. Instead, we are herding them together and retaining them for hours! Last night, Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia asked the Delhi airport operator DIAL to improve crowd management. DIAL has responded by saying that they are minimizing waiting times and have expanded facilities for waiting passengers. 

Nevertheless, given the passenger volumes and space/counter constraints this chaos is likely to continue at all international airports.

We can then pose a second question: does the idea of Covid-19 testing at the arrival airport make any sense? International travellers are allowed to board flights only if they are fully vaccinated, and also have to produce a negative Covid-19 report based on tests that have been done in the preceding 48 to 72 hours. If travellers have caught the infection at the airport or in the aircraft it is unlikely to be detected by a test immediately on deplaning. A more logical, and recommended, thing to do is to make it mandatory for all exiting passengers from "at-risk" nations to get tested between the third and the fifth day after arrival from any testing centre near their homes. A negative result would end their home quarantine while the automatic reporting systems already in place will take note of any positive results and activate the isolation as well as contact-tracing protocols.

Unfortunately, the entire Omicron saga seems to be one of various agencies and experts jumping guns. And it offers lessons about how not to communicate.

The first communication from the World Health Organization (WHO) itself was somewhat inadequate in that it did not provide details about the severity of the observed infections, vaccination status, ages of patients, immune status etc. The tone of its second communique was much more tentative sounding. To allay fears, WHO's scientist, Soumya Swaminathan said that the "world should not panic about the new Omicron variant of Covid-19 but it should prepare". 

Scientists too have been speaking out of turn and needlessly. A data-based study about the virus having a greater propensity to reinfect those who have recovered from a previous infection has still not been reviewed. There is no data in this study to throw light on how this variant interacts with fully vaccinated persons. The cases encountered so far note only mild infections and a quick spread in some parts of Africa - we do not know how universal these observations will turn out to be.

Communication in a pandemic needs to be nuanced so as to not provoke panic or promote carelessness. When data is insufficient it is best to state that more information is awaited. Instead, we have an 'expert' public discourse full of speculations and forecasts based on sporadic and anecdotal reports. Media reportage in the format of 'breaking news' and 'exclusives', as well as televised 'debates' which recycle this stuff endlessly are often full of superlatives, hyperbole and sensational conclusions. There is the omnipresent danger that speculation will be mistaken for reality by its constant repetition in the media that speaks mostly to untrained minds. Often this is amplified and fed into social media; here is an example which says that the Omicron variant is more fatal, attacks the lungs directly and cannot be detected by RTPCR!

A classic instance of "expert talk" is the persistent reference to "more than 30 mutations" in the spike protein of the Omicron variant, which will make the virus more infectious, lethal and whatever worse one can imagine. That the behavior of a virus is not dictated just by its mutations, and that viruses also have invariant parts that vaccines will recognize irrespective of the changes elsewhere, remains understated. In any case, finally, what matters most is how the clinical outcomes will play out in the real world and for that data is the only proof. 

The cacophony of voices that populate the discourse results in contradictory forecasts. For most people, the simplest way to reconcile such contradictions is to assume that no one - experts included - really knows what they are talking about. This creates a deep mistrust for science and rationality.

Meanwhile various authorities seem to be doing some kind of muscular compensatory atonement for their omissions during the deadly second wave, by introducing tough travel bans and restrictions now. Such  measures do not stop viruses, especially not those as infectious as the Delta and the Omicron variants. Look at how the Delta variant wreaked havoc in Australia despite very tight travel restrictions that had been reasonably effective against the earlier variants. Such 'tough' rules provide the right optics for showing off "how much is being done to combat the virus", - but not much more. Occasionally, they may buy some time, a few days or a week initially, after which the spreading rate is controlled by local factors and infection prevalence rather than incoming carriers from outside. It is not even clear where the Omicron variant came from. South Africa simply reported it first. The entire scenario is so convoluted that we may never know where Omicrom originated and how well it may already be entrenched in different parts of the world.

We should use this opportunity to renew calls for standard precautions like wearing masks, following contact hygiene, avoiding indoor gatherings (including those at airports) and enhancing ventilation. The new need is for more testing, especially where clusters are forming, and following this up with genetic sequencing for characterizing and detecting variants. 

Most importantly, the Omicron saga tells us that if vaccines are not shared across the globe, every uninfected person will continue to be a fertile factory for more and more mutants to emerge.

(Anurag Mehra is a Professor of Chemical Engineering and Associate Faculty at the Center for Policy Studies, at IIT Bombay.)

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