All India Institute of Medical Sciences Delhi (AIIMS) Director, Dr. Randeep Guleria, said on Wednesday that super spreader events may be the reason behind the recent increase in Covid-19 cases in Delhi.
“What happens is that if a mask is not used in a crowd, a person who may be asymptomatic and is highly infectious, can spread the disease to a large number of people in the crowd. If they contract the disease, they will take it to the area they go to, their own relatives, their relatives and they will spread the disease again. So you may have super spread events, and this likely happened in Delhi. There were crowds, people were not taking precautions and they were super scattered events and this led to an increase in the number of cases, ”Dr. Guleria told ANI.
A super spread event is one in which a single person with the virus can come into contact with many other people and transmit the virus to them. They have been gaining widespread attention following reports that Donald Trump’s pre-election fundraiser and his nightly election watch party could have been super-spread events, where members of his campaign were infected in significant numbers. Also in Kerala, cases increased after Onam celebrations.
Agreeing that crowds are hard to avoid during the holiday season, the AIIMS director cautioned that with falling temperatures and rising air pollution levels there is an urgent need to exercise caution. He also advised older people and people with comorbidities to be more vigilant during this phase and said there is a great need for everyone to wear masks whenever they are in places with a considerable number of people.
Speaking about the sudden increase in the number of coronavirus cases in Delhi, he said: “We are seeing a growing increase in cases in Delhi, and the numbers are increasing over time. The number of cases had dropped from 4,000 to 2,000, and now they are rising from 7,000 to 8,000 in one day, this is also reflected in an increase in hospital admissions and, to some extent, in mortality ”.
According to the website of the Union Ministry of Health on Wednesday, there are 41,385 active cases of Covid-19 in the national capital, while 4,02,854 patients have been cured and discharged. So far, more than 7,000 deaths have been reported in the national capital.
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