MUMBAI: With the emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants, there is no way to predict when the ongoing pandemic will end, according to one of the world’s leading infectious diseases specialists and former director of US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (
CDC
), Dr
Tom Frieden
.
Dr Frieden, in Mumbai as part of his five-state visit to study India’s hypertension-control programme, said in an interview with TOI that the “virus is adapting to humans and humans have to adapt to the virus. We have to keep learning so that we can adapt and address the needs in terms of the vaccines needed, their frequency and treatment.”
Asked what advice he had for Indians, reportedly more prone to heart attacks due to genetic reasons, he replied: “I don’t think Indians are genetically predisposed to heart attacks. It’s true that entire Southeast Asia, and not just India, witnesses a higher rate of diabetes, stroke and heart attacks — that too at a younger age. But a lot of this is due to undernutrition, prenatally and in early infancy. The best theory, as a flip side, is that if a mother is well-nourished before pregnancy and during pregnancy, and the child is well-nourished and does not have diarrhoeal diseases, then the child will grow better and be less susceptible to diabetes and hypertension.”
