Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday alleged that the government was being grossly negligent and overconfident about the coronavirus crisis, warning that “it is not over yet”.
Gandhi shared a clipping of a report by India Today about how the government has confirmed that the South African and Brazilian variants have been found in India.
During a press briefing on Tuesday, Director-General of Indian Centre for Medical Research Balram Bhargava said that at least one case of the Brazilian variant and four cases of the South African variant, have been reported so far, the report said. He said that the infected people and their contacts have been quarantined.
As for the variant that emerged in the United Kingdom, the ICMR chief said that India currently has 187 patients infected with the strain.
According to the World Health Organisation, the new strains are more contagious and spread faster. All three strains have gone through changes to their spike protein, or the part of the virus which attaches to human cells, and they seem to be better at infecting cells, according to scientists.
With more than 1.09 crore coronavirus cases, India remains the second-worst affected country in the world, but over the past two months, it has seen a steady decline in new cases. As many as 1,06,44,858 people have recovered from the infection, pushing the recovery rate to 97.33%. The active caseload on Wednesday went down to 1,36,549, which is 1.25% of the total positive cases.
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