Stop religious events, tourism: IMA’s appeal to prevent 3rd wave
NEW DELHI: Opening tourist destinations and allowing religious pilgrimage travel could act as Covid-19 “super spreaders” of a third wave of infections, the country’s top doctor’s body warned on Monday.
Stressing that tourist bonanza, pilgrimage travel, religious fervour are needed, but can wait for a few more months, the The Indian Medical Association (IMA), in a statement, said global evidence and the history of any pandemic suggest that “the third wave is inevitable and imminent”.
“However, it is painful to note that in this crucial time, when everyone needs to work for the mitigation of the third wave, in many parts of the country, both governments and the public are complacent and engaged in mass gatherings without following Covid protocols. Tourist bonanza, pilgrimage travel, religious fervour, all are needed, but can wait for a few more months.
“Opening up these rituals and enabling people without vaccination to go scot-free in these mass gatherings are potential super spreaders for the Covid third wave,” the IMA said.
The statement by the doctors comes on a day when the annual Rath Yatra began in Puri and amid talks of allowing the Kanwar Yatra in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
The IMA appealed to all the states to control mass gatherings.
Separately, the Uttarakhand chapter of IMA has written to
chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami requesting him to cancel the Kanwar Yatra this year for public safety.
The fortnight-long yatra that begins with the onset of the month of Shravan around July 25 and goes on till the first week of August, sees millions of Kanwariyas from neighbouring states like Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Delhi and Himachal Pradesh gathering in Haridwar to collect the holy waters of the Ganga.
The yatra had been cancelled
last year too due to the first wave of Covid-19.
“We request you to disallow the proposed Kanwar Yatra in July-August, 2021, as the third wave of Covid pandemic is ready to knock on the doors of this country according to several specialists,” IMA’s state secretary Amit Khanna said in a letter to the CM.
“After the first wave, we went off-guard and did not follow the guidelines of the central government delineated for this pandemic which was a gross negligence on our part and consequently lost several of our kin in the second wave,” the IMA official said.
Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi has expressed concern over the carelessness in following Covid-19 protocol, Khanna said, adding that the government should not allow devotees to enter the state learning from previous failure.
Dhami, who met central ministers, including PM Modi, in Delhi over the past few days, has already said that though the Kanwar Yatra is connected with the religious sentiments saving lives is the state government’s topmost priority. “Even the gods will not want people to die,” he said in Delhi on Sunday.