The World Health Organization’s (WHO) chief scientist has said Covid-19 variant spreading in India is a super spreader and may not do much for vaccine protections and that is what has contributed to the COVID19 crisis in the country.
Soumya Swaminathan has warned that “the epidemiological features that we see in India today do indicate that it’s an extremely rapidly spreading variant”.
According to Swaminathan, B.1.617 variant of Covid-19, which was first detected in India last Fall, was a contributing factor in the COVID explosion that India is witnessing right now.
The WHO recently listed B.1.617 as a “variant of concern (VOC)”.
Health authories in the US and Britain, said they consider B.1.617 a VOC, and Swaminathan said she expects the WHO to soon follow up on the variant.
Another blow to the nation as it has seen the death toll cross past 250,000 on Wednesday in the deadliest 24 hours since the pandemic began with a shortage of oxygen and hospital beds continuing.
Crematoriums and burial grounds are running out of space as dozens of bodies of people believed to have passed away have dissolved and washed up on the banks of the Ganges river in northern India.
There have been calls for a nationwide lockdown.
Photos courtesy of Istock and Yahoo.