How they reacted to 314,835
New cases in 24 Hours SOME REACTIONS FROM INDIA AND ABROAD AFTER INDIA REGISTERED THE WORLD’S LARGEST ONE-DAY RISE IN COVID CASE NUMBERS
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The situation will get worse and we will break many more grave milestones in the near future. Nobody knows by when we are going to control this...i think a 15day lockdown is a must if we really want to control the infection rate Prashant Khadayate, Pharma Division head, Globaldata Plc, Hyderabad
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The situation in India is heartbreaking and awful, but it’s the result of a complex mix of bad policy decisions, bad advice to justify those decisions, global and domestic politics, and a host of other complex variables
Angela Rasmussen, virologist, Georgetown University
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We let our guard down too early, opened up. People stopped following procedures. We really didn’t prepare in the time we got. As a result, the healthcare system is severely short-staffed right now ... the infrastructure is crumbling
Shahid Jameel, virologist, Trivedi School of Biosciences, Ashoka University, Sonipat
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Once the cases from the first wave...reached a low, there had been a feeling among the public that the worst was behind. It was partly fuelled by irresponsible statements from political leaders, many from the ruling government itself.” Professor Rijo M. John, Rajagiri College of Social Sciences, Kerala
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People in India started to think they managed to escape the pandemic. Now, of course, we are seeing a much more significant problem emerging, and you know, it could prove disastrous. You can’t even vaccinate 1.2 billion overnight
Prof. Nikolai Petrovsky, College of Medicine & Public Health, Adelaide, Australia
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There is a fear among doctors. The reason being that in many cases, the condition of patient deteriorates very quickly, leading to sudden death. Family members of patients do not realise the problem, and blame doctors and hospitals
Dr Kirit Gadhvi, president, Ahmedabad Medical Association
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We do not see the worst of the Covid situation over in India yet, as the infection resurgence has been driven by mutated variants. The variants in India is with a much higher reproduction coefficient than before.
Bum Ki-son, Asia Economist, Bank of America-merrill Lynch, Hong Kong
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We cannot rule out the role of more infectious variants in different parts of the country. In most samples in Punjab, the UK variant is isolated, while the available evidence indicates the ‘double mutant’ strain is mostly prevalent in Maharashtra. Giridhar Babu, Professor of Epidemiology, Public Health Foundation of India