While talking to NDTV, Dr Agarwal said: “At this point, there is no evidence to suggest that Delta Plus…has anything to do with a possible third wave.”
One of India’s top doctors and genome sequencer, amid worries of a possible third Covid wave, along with the emergence of a Delta Plus variant in parts of the country, brushed aside concerns of this new mutant fuelling an upsurge in infections. Director of the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), Dr Anurag Agarwal, also advised caution against lowering the guard on the second wave itself.
While talking to NDTV, Dr Agarwal said: “At this point, there is no evidence to suggest that Delta Plus…has anything to do with a possible third wave.”
“My institute has sequenced more than 3,500 samples from Maharashtra in the month of June, covering samples from April and May. We can see that these (Delta Plus variants) are very much there. But these would constitute less than one per cent,” he added.
Dr Agarwal assured that even in areas where the numbers are high, they are not “very high”. “Things look stable,” he said.
Flagged as “variant of concern”, over 40 cases of delta plus variant have been detected till now across the country. The government has sent out a warning to Maharashtra, Kerala, and Madhya Pradesh on this front, urging “immediate containment measures”.
However, Dr Agarwal clarified that any Delta remains a variant of concern.
“So what I mean when I say that we must not be very concerned is that for any Delta that exists anywhere in India today, we must be concerned about the second wave not ending, before we worry about the third wave,” he said.
“But I certainly do not see any reason right now for people to panic regarding Delta Plus being significantly worse than Delta or creating a major third wave…There is absolutely no evidence for that,” Dr Agarwal told NDTV.
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