The Director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Dr Randeep Guleria, spoke exclusively to The Sunday Guardian, about the recent surge in infections caused by the novel coronavirus and the reasons behind it.
“People are neglecting Covid-appropriate behaviour, they have stopped wearing masks, maintaining social distancing and sanitising, and the virus has gotten an opportunity to spread,” said Dr Guleria.
“Metropolitan cities are getting more affected because urban mobilisation is more compared to rural areas. We stopped tracing, testing, treating and isolation too. Surveillance is important and more containment zones will help now as they helped earlier,” he added.
He said further, “Last year, when the pandemic struck the world, the virus mostly affected the elderly and people with comorbidities. But this time, younger people are also getting infected with mild symptoms. Children are being infected suddenly because they are getting exposed to the virus.”
“Young people are not serious about it and report cases only when the situation gets out of their control,” said the AIIMS director, adding, “More people with comorbidities are getting infected and the death rate has increased in some cases. But there is no data which suggests that the death rate has increased overall.”
He also warned that the new UK variant is dangerous and can spread from one person to ten at a time.
“If cases do not reduce, the healthcare system will get badly affected. Hospital infrastructure and medical staff is already under stress. It is necessary to strengthen infrastructure also,” he said further.
On the question of imposing a second lockdown, Dr Guleria said, “Weekend lockdowns and night curfews will control the situation, but not to a great extent. It’s important to make containment zones and impose micro-lockdowns where there are more cases.”