On guard
The nation is not past the COVID threat factor; let there not be any breach of safety protocols
The issue is not when a third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic will strike India. The issue is what the Government and the people are doing to minimise its impact. There are fresh predictions daily about the onset of the new wave in July or August but the only reality is that the second wave is still around. India on Saturday, July 10, recorded 42,766 fresh cases. Just over half of them came from Kerala with 13,563 new infections and Maharashtra with 8,992. In the north-east where too infection lingers, Assam accounted for 2391 fresh positive cases in one day. The Kerala Government attributes the growing numbers to the high awareness quotient among Keralites — people go and get themselves tested the moment they feel they have the symptoms rather than neglect it. Even if most of these people have mild symptoms and do not get admitted to hospitals, their cases get recorded swelling the total figure. However, the fact remains that only a breach of safety protocol can cause symptoms in the first place. So, the answer to rising cases is not an explanation about testing but about enforcing protocols strictly. In other States, like Delhi, the rapid decline in the number of cases is being cited to claim that threshold immunity could have been reached because the number of people originally infected was more. This argument is not backed by any scientific assessment.
In both Kerala and Delhi, there appears an element of over confidence of having already overcome the worst. If that explains the nonchalance with which the safety protocols are being violated, it is not a good sign at all. In Delhi the Government took the extreme step of closing down one of the biggest markets for violations. Chaos rules tourist towns in the hill regions. Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand are toying with the idea of opening the Char Dham Yatra and the Kanwar Yatra, both of which attract huge crowds. Uttar Pradesh has already witnessed the impact of breach of protocols during the Kumbh Mela. In some States, schools and colleges are being reopened from the middle of this month. The states have already relaxed most of the lockdown restrictions. The big worry is also about the kind of virus variants the violation of safety protocols can invite. As on date, there are six variants of concern or interest across the world. The latest Lambda variant is not present in India. The Health Ministry quotes June data to say there are 3,969 Alpha, 149 Beta, 1 Gamma, and 16,238 Delta and Kappa variant cases in India. The options are clearly limited to stricter enforcement of basic regulations, scientific lockdown relaxations and conducting sero-prevalence surveys that estimate the proportion of population that has acquired antibodies against the virus, and, of course, increasing the pace of the vaccination drive. Tripura has shown the way by extending curfew in urban areas after detection of the Delta Plus variant.
Source: The Pioneer
