New Delhi (NVI): Even as India continues to bear the brutal brunt of the second wave of coronavirus, the government today said the country should “prepare for new waves” of the deadly pandemic as the third wave is “inevitable” although its timing or scale cannot be predicted.
The government said the country is witnessing around 2.4% increase per day in COVID cases, with 12 states being the worst affected.
Rising trend in coronavirus cases has been witnessed particularly in states like West Bengal, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and Bihar, top officials of the Union government said at a briefing here.
“We should prepare for new waves (of coronavirus)…. Phase 3 is inevitable, given the higher levels of circulating virus but it is not clear what time or on what scale this phase 3 will occur,” said K Vijay Raghavan, Principal Scientific Advisor to the government of India.
Talking about the variants, he said the virus infects humans in a manner that makes it more transmissible as it gains entry, makes more copies and goes on, same as original.
Raghavan said vaccines are effective against the current variants.
“Scientists of India and all over the world are working to anticipate these kinds of variants and act against them rapidly by early warning and developing modified tools. It’s an intense research programme, happening in India and abroad,” Raghavan said.
GLav Agarwal, Joint Secretary in the Union Health Ministry, while giving an update on the Covid situation in the country, said 12 states have more than 1 lakh active cases, seven have 50,000 to 1 lakh active cases and 17 states have less than 50,000 active cases.
Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh & Andhra Pradesh have around 1.5 lakh active cases, he said.
Talking about areas of concern, Agarwal said Bengaluru reported around 1.49 lakh cases in last one week while Chennai reported 38,000 cases.
Some districts, like Gurugram in Haryana on Delhi border and Kozhikode and Ernakulam in Kerala have recorded speedy rise in COVID cases.
