Religious and political gatherings responsible for Covid-19’s spread across India, says WHO

In its weekly assessment of the situation in India, the WHO has stated that the variant B.1.167 of Covid-19 was first traced in the Indian territory in October last year, but the Indian government made an early announcement of winning the war against the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The variant B.1.167 of Covid-19 gets transmitted very fast, but the Indian government’s prior statement of winning the war against the Covid-19 pandemic made people careless about following the Covid-19 norms due to which the situation has turned explosive across India,” said WHO in its statement.
“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 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 mixing; and, under use of and reduced adherence to public health and social measures (PHSM). The exact contributions of each of these factors on increased transmission in India are not well understood,” it said.
Due to the increase in Covid-19 related cases across Punjab and India, the SGPC had decided to call off the grand celebrations it had planned to celebrate Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji’s 400th Gurpurab anniversary. However, despite the rising cases, the Indian Government failed to take the right actions at the right time.