The government’s top scientific adviser stated on Wednesday that a third wave of coronavirus infections is inevitable. The adviser further cautioned that the vaccines need to be updated to deal with the new strains that have put an excessive load on the hospitals and caused deaths of thousands.

At a government briefing, the adviser, Dr K Vijay Raghavan said, “Phase 3 (third wave) is inevitable, given the high levels at which this virus is circulating. But it is not clear at what time scale this Phase 3 will occur.”

It was observed that the current surge in the Covid19 infections is probably due to the Indian double mutant virus. On a query about whether a national lockdown was the only solution to contain the spread and the rise in the infections, VK Paul who is a NITI Aayog member and chief of the national expert group, said that any more options are being discussed. Paul further added that there is already a guideline given to the states to impose restrictions to suppress the chain of transmission. Currently, the central government has dropped the ball in the courts of the state governments’ courts, on how to contain the spread.

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Under the onslaught of the second wave of Covid19, India accounted for nearly half of the cases reported worldwide last week, as per World Health Organization. Hospitals are struggling for Oxygen and beds as they fight the increasing number of cases. The Morgues and crematoriums are dealing with an almost unstoppable streamline of dead bodies in need of cremation. Many medical experts suggest that the actual figures for India could be atleast 5 to 10 times the officially reported tallies.  One crore cases were added in India in just over four months, after the country recorded its first crore cases in more than 10 months. This shows the intensity of the second wave with respect to the first wave.

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India can test around 15 lakh tests in its 2,506 molecular testing laboratories, including RT-PCR, TrueNat, CBNAAT and other platforms. In this context, the government has issued a guideline on when not to go for RT-PCR.  How this guideline will impact the testing & the recordings of the new cases will also have impacts on the second wave and the third wave highlighted by Dr. K VijayRaghavan.

The sudden increase in the number of cases coincided with the drop in vaccination rates due to supply and delivery issues. But the fact that India exported 60 million vaccine doses to 70 countries before the arrival of the second wave cannot be ignored as a symptom of incompetency and lack anticipation by the authorities, which indeed added to the current issue of vaccine deficiency in India.

Therefore, it remains to be seen how does the government handle the inevitable third wave, when it arrives.