Brace Yourselves! A Second Wave on the Way?
After what seemed like an eternity, India was opening up, and to a large extent, it certainly did. Restaurants, movie theatres, malls, everything was functional to its permissible capacity. However, after a period of reduced cases and case graph, the last two weeks have seen a constant increase in the rise in the number of cases, even as the country is running one of the largest vaccination drives against the virus.
India, on 22nd Feb, crossed 1.1 crore cases with the toll due to the disease reached 1,56,000. The national case positivity rate is currently at 5.20% and we have 1,50,055 active cases. What is more worrying is the rising number of virus mutations across the world, with India having 2-3 mutant strains of its own that were detected in the state of Maharashtra. As was in the first wave around the same time last year, Delhi and Mumbai remain the most affected.
If experts and healthcare professionals are to be believed, India is sitting on the brink of a second wave of the ongoing pandemic and unlike last time, the number of factors influencing it is more.