Dealing With The Second Wave

Here are the actions we must undertake to fight the Covid storm upon us

- NK Ganguly and Namita Jaggi

As cases continue to surge across the globe and in India, we live amidst Covid positive cases – infected with the original virus or the variant virus, recovered cases, vaccinated people and the non-vaccinated in the second wave of Covid. For some unexplained, misguided and baseless reason, people feel that the pandemic is improving and demonstrate the same in irresponsible behaviour of unmasking, partying in crowds, and indulging in non-essential leisure travel.

Three variants of concern have been recognised by WHO, the UK variant (B.1.1.7), the Brazilian variant P1, and the South African variant B.1.351, with two more California variants (B.1.427 and B.1.429) reported by CDC and many more arising. All these variants are more contagious and except the UK variant have a moderate ability to evade the vaccine.

India’s health ministry recently released data on genome sequencing of 10,787 samples from 18 states which showed 771 cases of known variants (7.1%). Of these 95.4% were the UK variants, 4.4% were the South African variants and only one case had the Brazilian variant. A new variant of concern – a double mutant with two mutations E484Q and L425R (similar to the South African variant which is known to evade immunity) were found in 206 samples from Maharashtra and also from Punjab, Delhi and Gujarat.