Spotlight Northeast
13 May,2021* 13:52 IST* 2 MIN READ
“Several religious and political mass gathering events are contributing to the surge in Covid positive cases in India.” says World Health Organization (WHO).
In its weekly epidemiological update on the pandemic released on Tuesday, the health body said that viruses in the B.1.617 lineage were first reported in India in October 2020.
“The resurgence in COVID-19 cases and deaths in India has raised questions on the potential role of B.1.617 and other variants (e.g., B.1.1.7) in circulation, the update said.
“A recent risk assessment of the situation in India conducted by WHO found that resurgence and acceleration of COVID-19 transmission in India had several potential contributing factors, including increase in the proportion of cases of SARS-CoV-2 variants with potentially increased transmissibility; several religious and political mass gathering events which increased social mixing; and, under use of and reduced adherence to public health and social measures (PHSM). The exact contributions of these each of these factors on increased transmission in India are not well understood, it said.
The update said that approximately 0.1% of positive samples in India have been sequenced and uploaded to GISAID to identify SARS-CoV-2 variants. GISAID enables rapid and open access to epidemic and pandemic virus data.
The WHO update said that “the prevalence of several VOCs including B.1.1.7 and B.1.612 sublineages increased concurrent to the surge in COVID-19 cases reported in India.”
Giving a global overview of the COVID19 situation, the update said that the number of new COVID-19 cases and deaths globally decreased slightly this week, with over 5.5 million cases and over 90000 deaths.
Recently, in India election was held in five States where no amount of social distancing and measure has been taken. Madras High court held the Election Commission of India accountable for the rapid spike in covid cases and called them murderers.
On the other hand, the huge mass gathering in Kumbh Mela drew huge attention from the world community. At this time, was there any need to arrange such a religious program, asked many international media.
On April 17, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that the celebration should be held as a “symbolic event” due to the coronavirus situation.
