Unfolding the COVID-19 second wave in India

Early efforts to vaccinate the Indian population were started on 16th January 2021. With this, a ray of hope came as people again starting their livelihoods, roads looked busy again, playgrounds were again full of children. Everything seems back to normal, while the Government was allowing all other activities with the option to follow the COVID appropriate behavior (CAB) keeping a blind eye to whether or not someone follows it. The immediate consequence of this laxity was that people were not following the CAB in particular, and by the end of January 2021, the situation was back to normal, as if there were no pandemics anywhere. While the rate of vaccination was slowly taking pace, the majority population believed that the vaccination may be necessary later, leading to the vaccine hesitancy. The second wave which started in the last quarter of March 2021 and spreader much faster than the first wave, is believed to be fueled by the additional strains of the coronavirus, as stated by many health experts. New coronavirus strains are thought to be more infectious home ground variants found in 61% of samples of genomes sequenced in many states in India. Even such news was reported by media rapidly, the laxity in the CAB and preventive measures, coupled with the presence of new variants, has resulted in a nationwide crisis. What caught the attention of the globe was despite the ongoing pandemic, the Indian Government allowed State assembly elections in the Eastern part of the country, which could have been delayed at this point. The prime Minster led Government faced this Critic from the opposition while the “Maha Kumbh Mela” organized at Haridwar attended by lacs of devotees who believed to bathe in a ritual river to pure themselves for their mistakes of past was also allowed by the Government. It was reported by media that about 7 million devotees attended the event and 1700 tested positive for covid-19 over 5 days period because no such social distancing measures