Health

Will India witness the third wave of corona?

Kerala recorded the highest number of corona positive cases in the country. God’s own country registered more than 68% of the total cases in India and recorded more than 35% of deaths. According to the data, Kerala witnessed 31,445 cases and 215 deaths, while India registered 46,164 positive cases and 607 deaths.

Apart from Kerala, Maharashtra recorded 5031 cases and 216 deaths, Andhra Pradesh 1601 cases and 16 deaths, Tamil Nadu 1573 and 27 deaths and Karnataka 1224 cases and 22 deaths. India to date has recorded 3.26 crore positive cases and 4.36 lakh deaths.

Meanwhile, World Health Organisation (WHO) chief scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan said that India with low or moderate levels of transmission of covid-19 infection will likely enter some kind of state of endemicity. The endemic stage is when the infection is present in a certain population or region and the people have learnt to live with it.

She also mentioned, “As far as India is concerned that seems to be what is happening and because of the size of India and heterogeneity of population and immunity status in different parts of the country in different pockets, it is very very feasible that the situation may continue like this with ups and downs in different parts of the country, particularly where there are more susceptible population, so those groups who were perhaps less affected by first and second waves or those areas with low levels of vaccine coverage we could see peaks and troughs for the next several months.”

Swaminathan said that while it is possible that children could get infected and transmit, children luckily have very mild illness most of the time and there is a small percentage that gets sick and get inflammatory complications and few will die but much much less than the adult population. She said that preparing hospitals for paediatric admissions, paediatric intensive care is going to serve our health system in many ways for other illnesses children have but we should not panic about thousands of children crowding into ICUs.

She also hoped that India would achieve the targeted vaccine coverage of 70% of the population by the end of 2022. So far, more than 60.38 crore people in India have been vaccinated of which more than 47 crores have received the first dose and more than 13 crore people have received both doses.

In Rajasthan, more than 1 crore people have been administered two doses of the covid vaccine. Health Minister Dr Raghu Sharma said that the state is leading in vaccination throughout the country after the corona management. He said that 20% of the targeted population in the state has been vaccinated by administering a second dose to more than 1 crore people. 

The Health Minister said that a total of 4,12,67,359 people in the state have been vaccinated with corona vaccine doses. Of these, 3,12,58,116 people have been administered the first dose and 1,00,09,243 people have been administered both doses. He said that vaccination is being done on 3,177 vaccination sites in the state including 3,109 government and 68 private vaccination sites. He has complimented the health personnel for this achievement.

The Health Minister said that anticipating the third wave of the corona, the infrastructure of all children’s hospitals in the state is being strengthened. He said that ICU along with medical oxygen is being ensured in selected 332 Community Health Centres. He said that so far more than 550 additional beds have been dedicated to the public in various hospitals and the number of beds is continuously being increased.

Dr Sharma said that oxygen generation plants are being constantly set up in the state for the availability of 1000 metric tons of medical oxygen. To overcome the shortage of oxygen, the government has procured more than 50,000 oxygen concentrators, which are being sent to medical institutions in remote areas so that villagers need not have to come to cities.

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