© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
As new coronavirus cases in the US and most of Europe touched record highs, India too has started to show signs of an impending surge. More than 9,000 new infections were detected in India on Tuesday, the highest since December 8. The upward trend in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Delhi has been noticeable for at least a week now, but these increases were small and getting compensated by declining numbers in Kerala, so that the surge was not very visible at the national level.
But that is changing now. The seven-day average of daily case counts, which smoothens daily fluctuations, has reversed direction and moved up to cross the 7,000-mark after ten days on Tuesday.
The sharpest turnaround is happening in Delhi and Mumbai, which usually have the largest number of arrivals from foreign countries. Delhi is back, after eight months, among the top five states reporting the most cases. On Wednesday, it reported 923 cases, almost twice the previous day’s count.
Mumbai has been witnessing an even bigger rise. On Wednesday, it reported 2,510 new cases, more than the entire state of Kerala which has been detecting the highest number of cases for over six months now.
The surge can almost certainly be attributed to the Omicron variant, in keeping with trends elsewhere in the world, although the actual number of confirmed Omicron infections is still below 1,000. But that is only because the detection of any particular variant usually requires genome sequencing, and that takes time. Besides, only a small fraction of the positive cases is sent for genome sequencing. The actual number of Omicron cases in India is expected to be several times higher than the reported number.
Cases have begun to rise in West Bengal as well. On Wednesday, the state reported over 1,000 cases for the first time since July 4. In the last couple of days, case numbers have doubled in the state. Similar trends are being seen in Maharashtra and Gujarat.
