New Delhi:
A new strategy is required to combat the rise of Covid in the country that is driven by laxity in maintaining security measures and a mutant strain of Covid, Dr. Randeep Guleria, the head of the Institute of Medical Sciences of the India from Delhi and a prominent member of the government’s Covid Task Force – said on Saturday.
Over the past 24 hours, the country experienced the largest daily increase in Covid cases since mid-September, with 93,249 fresh infections, bringing the count to more than 1.24 million rupees.
This is the highest since September 19, when 93,337 cases were registered.
What the country has now is community transmission and unless it can be contained, the health care system will be overwhelmed, the AIIMS chief said.
“We have to work aggressively to reduce the number of cases,” through a broader range of measures, including “containment zones, lockdown areas, increased testing, tracking and isolation,” said Dr. Guleria. He also suggested that “micro closures” were necessary to contain the spread.
“We can do things that do not affect the economy too much and one of them is travel that is not essential. People can obviously postpone their vacations and vacations for some time and that will help decrease the spread of infection to areas where there are not so many cases, “he said.
This is a big change, “because we are not talking only about air travel, but about road and train travel, and all of that becomes difficult when you look at it holistically,” he added.
Several states have issued restrictions on travel to and from Maharashtra, which is the hardest hit by the virus. But besides Maharashtra, seven other states are driving the increase in numbers. The list includes Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, and Madhya Pradesh.
There is also a need to contain the virus in areas where it is increasing, Dr. Guleria said. To do this, it is essential to increase genome sequencing and connect it with epidemiological data from the field.
The government maintains that the second emerging wave of the virus is due to lax observance of security measures such as the use of masks and social distancing.
“Just because the data is not there does not mean it is not happening,” Dr. Guleria said in an earlier interview. “It is logical that if there is a sudden increase in cases, something is happening and it is making the virus more infectious,” he added.
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