Data shows severity, virulence in second wave similar to first

NEW DELHI: Amid a staggering surge in Covid-19 cases across the country, the Centre on Wednesday sought to quell the panic by presenting a slew of statistics to show the severity and virulence in the ongoing second wave of the contagion are about the same as the first one.

The government cautioned there is no clear sign of any downtrend in the Covid graph yet. Also, 21,000 people have tested positive for Covid-19 after taking the first dose of either Covishield or Covaxin vaccines, while nearly 5,700 contracted the infection after taking both the doses, government data revealed. At a press conference on Wednesday, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said the Covid-19 positivity rate in 146 districts was over 15%, while it was between 5 and 15% in 274 districts.

"We are in the midst of the second wave of the pandemic and we are still seeing an upsurge. We cannot comment when the numbers will come down," ICMR Director General Balram Bhargava said.

Presenting data from both the waves of the pandemic, he said 8.07% of cases reported in the first wave were between the age group of 10-20 years, while in this time it is 8.50%.

“In the age group 20-30 years, 20.41% cases were reported in the first wave, while in the second it was 19.35%.”

The data was released amid a growing panic the second wave is somehow more powerful and could cause greater havoc. India is already grappling with a shortage of oxygen and other medical supplies as its health infrastructure is stretched to the limits due to spiralling COVID-19 cases.

Asked how did the second wave catch the country unawares, Bhushan said, "Today is not the time to go into why did we miss or did we miss or did we prepare. It is time to jointly face the pandemic. Once we emerge from it successfully, then probably... we would be able to deliberate on this.”