‘Any third wave is in our hands’
The Hindu
Vaccines are not a “guarantee” but face masks are, says top scientist
Unless a new SARS-CoV-2 variant, which is more infectious and virulent than the Delta is allowed to emerge with “carelessness disregarding face masks, hosting indoor events and crowding”, any third wave can be “contained and managed within a particular outbreak area by rigorous testing, tracing and isolating”, observes eminent scientist and director of Tata Institute for Genetics and Society Rakesh Mishra.
“Delta with several fold higher infectious nature has created havoc during the second wave in India and dominated all over the world. Any variant to replace this has to be more infectious. We were caught unprepared then for such a surge, but now we are keeping the virus under watch through genome surveillance,” he explains.
Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Sequencing Consortium (INSACOG) of 28 institutions has been getting samples from infected patients from different parts of the country but with reduced cases, this number too has reduced, though, for the moment, it is sufficient enough for the scientists to keep track of the mutations, which at an average are two every month.