New Delhi, April 20: Even as some of the states and Union Territories are seeing a significant rise in the number of Covid-19 cases, one of the top scientists believes that the surge in infection will not lead to the fourth wave by any chance in India.
Former Chief Scientist of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Dr R Gangakhedkar, said India had sublineages of the Omicron variant of Covid 19, but no new variant had been reported so far and the chances of the fourth wave could not be seen as of now.
"I don't think this is the fourth wave of Covid-19 by any chance. One thing we have to understand is that the entire world continues to have BA.2 variants, which is infecting people every day," he said.
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He elaborated that due to the opening of schools and colleges, people have become socially active resultantly the surge in cases is being witnessed. "The second issue is that we have allowed the schools to open as well as the college students are moving now. The result is now that they are out in the open, they are getting infected and clusters of those infections can be sizable mainly because of social networks," said Dr Gangakhedkar.
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According to Dr Gangakhedkar, "The withdrawal of the use of masks is also the reason for the surge in cases. It is also true that some of us still have misunderstood the mandatory use of masks, which has been withdrawn. Some of us may be presuming that there is no fear of acquiring any infection so I can move freely and they have stopped using the mask and therefore, they also get infected if they come in contact with somebody who's infected as of now."
"So essentially this kind of a reaction when you relax the lockdown is more likely to come and we may see a smaller surge," he added while cautioning against removing masks.
He said the infection from Omicron was going to persist for six to nine months and recombinant variants were an accident that would not lead to the fourth wave of Covid 10 in India.
Since the beginning of April, India has been continuously registering a rise in Covid cases daily. However, on Monday, the country recorded about a 90 per cent jump with 2,183 cases.
-PTC News
