New Delhi: The US-Based health expert Dr. Christopher Murray has expressed concern about the rise of covid-19 cases in India. Murray said that “India is expected to register about 5 lakh cases during peak which is likely to come in February.”
Christopher Murray is a Director at Institute for Health Metrics & Evaluation. On the Omicron variant, he said that Omicron is less severe. It will lead to less hospitalization and deaths compared to the Delta variant.
India is witnessing the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and there will be an upward curve of the number of cases and then it will gradually go down.
On the other side – the WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says that the Omicron variant of COVID-19 appears to be a less severe disease than the Delta strain, but it does not mean it should be categorized as “mild”.
“Hospitals are becoming overcrowded and understaffed, which further results in preventable deaths from not only COVID-19 but other diseases and injuries where patients cannot receive timely care.” the WHO director-general said.
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Saturday said that India reported 1,41,986 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, taking the daily positivity rate in the country to 7.74 percent.
There have been 40,895 recoveries and 285 deaths in the last 24 hours. The daily positivity rate stands at 9.28 percent. Active cases are 472,169, and total recoveries stand at 34,412,740. The total death toll is 483,178 while total vaccination stands at 150.06 crore doses.
(_Vinayak Barot)