Religious and political events accelerated COVID-19 transmission in India: WHO
WHO Coronavirus Update: The World Health Organisation on Thursday stated that a recent risk assessment of the situation in India found that the "several religious and political mass gathering events" were the factors behind the “resurgence and acceleration” of COVID-19 transmission in India.
The WHO said that viruses in the B.1.617 lineage were first reported in India in October 2020.
Also Read | PM Narendra Modi a ‘super-spreader’ of COVID-19, says IMA Vice President
The World Health Organisation said that "the resurgence of COVID-19 transmission in India raised questions on the potential role of B.1.617 and other variants (e.g., B.1.1.7) in circulation."
Also Read | Coronavirus pandemic could have been prevented: Report
It stated that "A recent risk assessment of the situation in India conducted by WHO found that resurgence and acceleration of COVID-19 transmission in India had several potential contributing factors, including the increase in the proportion of cases of SARS-CoV-2 variants with potentially increased transmissibility; several religious and political mass gathering events which increased social mixin."
However, it also added that the exact contributions of each of these factors on increased transmission in India are not well understood."
The WHO's coronavirus update said that outside of India, the UK has reported the largest number of cases of B.1.617 sub-lineages, and recently designated B.1.617.2 as a “national variant of concern.”
It further reported that the number of new coronavirus cases and deaths decreased globally slightly this week, with over 5.5 million cases and over 90,000 deaths.
Click here to follow PTC News on Twitter
-PTC News
