India’s coronavirus deaths rose by a record 3,780 during the last 24 hours, a day after the country became the world’s second, after the United States, to cross the grim milestone of 2 crore total cases mark. Daily cases rose by 3,82,315 to 2,06,65,148 since the pandemic broke out in January 2020. India has recorded more than 3 lakh cases a day for nearly 15 days in a row, since April 22. So far, 22.2% of the whole population of the country i.e. 304,018,852 people took the first jab whereas, only 5.4% of the entire population i.e. only 73,333,649 people are fully vaccinated.
Niti Aayog member (health) VK Paul amid the ongoing apprehension of a third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, on Tuesday said the third wave is already there in the world and the wave has already recorded 3.90 lakh cases, 40 per cent of the number of cases reported in the second wave, which recorded around 9 lakh Covid-19 cases. “Our task is to ensure that the wave does not come in India,” said the Niti Aayog member during the official briefing of the Union health ministry. Citing global data, the Union health ministry said that the United Kingdom, Russia, Bangladesh, Indonesia are seeing a surge in the number of Covid-19 cases, which is indicating at a new wave of the Coronavirus pandemic.
Scientists and experts are studying the reason for the current surge in cases in India and particularly whether a variant first detected in the country, called B.1.617, is the reason. It has been classified by scientists in the United Kingdom as a “variant under investigation” and has been partially blamed for the explosion in the number of cases in India.
Meanwhile, K VijayRaghavan, principal scientific advisor to the government, on Wednesday warned that a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic was inevitable. At a press conference, VijayRaghavan spoke about the future of the coronavirus crisis. He said that vaccines have to be “updated” to deal with new strains of the virus, along with further surveillance.
“A phase three is inevitable, given the higher levels of circulating virus,” he said. “But it is not clear on what time scale this phase three will occur. Hopefully, incrementally, but we should prepare for new waves. Previous infections and vaccines will cause adaptive pressure on the virus for new kinds of changes which try to escape. We should be prepared scientifically to take care of that.”
VijayRaghavan said new variants are transmitted in the same manner as the original strain. “It doesn’t have properties of new kinds of transmission,” he added. “It infects humans in a manner that makes it more transmissible as it gains entry, makes more copies and goes on, same as original.”
Although, VijayRaghavan also said that vaccines were effective against the variants. “New variants will arise all over the world and in India too, but variants that increase transmission will likely plateau,” he said. “Immune evasive variants and those which lower or increase disease severity will arise going ahead.”
To avoid the limited number of beds and struggle of lack of oxygen from happening this time too, the central government and the other higher authorities are paying serious attention to this matter.
