COVID-19 contaminations increase exponentially in the subcontinent. If the Omicron variant could cause less stringent symptoms, it nevertheless threatens the Indian health system because of its high transmissibility.
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A third wave of contaminations to COVID-19 falls dazzling on India. The South Asian giant has identified, Friday, January 7, 117 100 new cases and more than 300 deaths in the last twenty-four hours. In two days, new contaminations have doubled across the country. At the origin of this resurgence, the Omicron Variant, whose first cases were identified in India on December 2nd. The virus is currently raging in large urban centers, such as New Delhi, Calcutta or Bombay. The latter, the country’s financial capital, only recorded more than 20,000 new cases on Thursday, a number still reached since the beginning of the pandemic.
In the face of the exponential increase in the number of contamination, the restrictions multiply. New Delhi, the capital, who recorded, Thursday, more than 15,000 new infections in one day, will confine on Friday night from 22 hours, until Monday morning 5 hours. The 20 million inhabitants of Indian megalopolis already lived at the rhythms of nightfights since the end of December, as well as the inhabitants of the states of Karnataka (South), Punjab (North) or Western Bengal (East). “The nocturnal lights and confines on weekends are not relevant to a scientific point,” regrets, however, Chandrakant Lahariya, epidemiologist and expert in public health, who advocates more localized measures and a clearer message to the attention from the public.
In recent weeks, Indian leaders have continued to send contradictory signals. At the approach of key elections in several states, dozens of politicians – including the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi – participated in mega-political events. In these crowds as on the scenes, barrier gestures were not, or little, respected. After holding, without mask, a campaign rally in the state of Uttarakhand, Arvind Kejriwal, the chief of the Executive of New Delhi, was diagnosed positive at SARS-COV-2, Tuesday. “It’s irresponsible on their part. They are our leaders, they must put into practice what they preach if they want the population to follow the rules”, Plague Inderjit Singh, a trader from the Indian capital, behind his two masks.
Political gatherings
Just a few months after the terrible Delta wave that seated the country in the spring, the memories of the patients out of breath in front of the hospitals and the incessant funerary pyres are still alive. “Here it was hell on earth,” says Inderjit Singh. At the time already, Indian officials had chosen to ignore the rules they imposed on one side, to allow immense political and religious gatherings of the other. But Thursday, in the face of the multiplication of critics and the sudden increase in the number of cases, several political events were finally canceled.
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