India needs \u201caggressive lockdowns\u201d like the one imposed in March last year to contain the ongoing second wave of COVID-19, AIIMS chief Dr Randeep Guleria said on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Guleria, according to a report by NDTV, said the country\u2019s health infrastructure is \u201cstretched to the limit\u201d and \u201caggressive lockdowns\u201d in areas with positivity rates over 10 per cent are needed to contain the wave.<\/p>\n
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India, according to him, had been caught \u201coff guard\u201d by the ferocity with which the virus was spreading.<\/p>\n
Night curfews and weekend lockdowns \u2013 such as those enforced by Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Haryana and other states \u2013 were proving to be ineffectual, he said as per the report.<\/p>\n
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He also said the death of a doctor in Delhi \u2013 Dr RK Himthani was one of 12 people who died after Batra Hospital ran out of oxygen \u2013 was a personal loss as he had known him since his student days.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat (the 12 deaths) drives home the point we need to be aggressive in containing the virus\u2026 healthcare infrastructure and workers are stretched to the limit,\u201d Dr Guleria said.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWhy is this happening? Because of continuously increasing number of cases\u2026 we have to work aggressively to bring this number down. No healthcare system in the world can manage this kind of load. The issue of aggressive containment or lockdown, or whatever, is key,\u201d he stressed.<\/p>\n
Hours earlier Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal \u2013 whose government is battling positivity rates in excess of 30 per cent \u2013 had extended ongoing restrictions by a week.<\/p>\n
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This is the second time Dr Guleria has called for strict lockdowns in high positivity areas.<\/p>\n
The AIIMS chief said the government had been caught off guard, and that a combination of factors were behind the spike in cases \u2013 this morning India reported over four lakh new ones in 24 hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe felt confident because vaccines were coming, and cases were falling\u2026 thought Covid won\u2019t be a problem. So, a lot of people ignored Covid behaviour\u2026 and did not really factor in infectiousness of the new strains, that it could mutate and spread like wildfire in our population,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
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Dr Guleria also pointed out the fallacy in hoping for \u2018herd immunity\u2019, saying, \u201cWe have this feeling of \u2018herd immunity\u2019 without realising that if the virus changes that immunity is not of much use.\u201d<\/p>\n
The flood of new cases every day, he said, meant hospitals had less time to turnaround beds so new patients could be admitted, and doctors had less time to treat every patient.<\/p>\n
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And on the current wave peaking over the next few days and weeks, Dr Guleria said he expected peaks to vary from region to region, pointing to the apparent levelling off in Maharashtra and Delhi.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
India needs \u201caggressive lockdowns\u201d like the one imposed in March last year to contain the ongoing second wave of COVID-19, AIIMS chief Dr Randeep Guleria said on Saturday. Guleria, according to a report by NDTV, said the country\u2019s health infrastructure is \u201cstretched to the limit\u201d and \u201caggressive lockdowns\u201d in areas with positivity rates over 10 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37852,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37853\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}