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India is going through a rough phase due to the second wave. The medical facilities in the country are overwhelmed and patients are unable to find beds and oxygen in hospitals.
However, now in an interviews with ANI World Health Organisation (WHO) Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan said that the projections of one million deaths by August projected by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) are based on models and available data, which are not predictions of the future and can be changed.
“I would say that at this point of time, the situation is very worrying, the daily number of cases and deaths that we are seeing today in India and other countries in the Southeast area region is a big concern for us and we also realise that these are underestimates. Every country in the world, in fact, the number of cases and deaths has been underestimated to its true number,” she told ANI, adding that governments should boost exercises to report actual numbers.
“We are classifying this as a variant of concern at a global level,” Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical lead on COVID-19, told a briefing.
The B.1.617 variant is the fourth variant to be designated as being of “global concern” and requiring heightened tracking and analysis and data collection must be done in a transparent way, the Chief Scientist added.
