Hospitalisations, not total Omicron cases, should concern us: Gautam Menon

'Boosters are certainly in order for the elderly, those health care workers who were vaccinated early on and the immunocompromised', said Menon

As Omicron cases rise around the world, more data about the variant is now being generated. In India, the number of detected Omicron cases has crossed 140. Gautam Menon, professor of physics and biology at Ashoka University, and professor (on lien) with the Theoretical Physics and Computational Biology groups at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, says this is “almost surely” an underestimation and that India is likely to see a surge in cases in January. He tells Ruchika Chitravanshi that it is not the number of Omicron cases but how many of them are getting hospitalised that should concern