Religious, political events among factors that accelerated Covid-19 transmission in India: WHO

The World Health Organisation has said a recent risk assessment of the situation in India found that resurgence and acceleration of Covid19 transmission in the country had several potential contributing factors including several religious and political mass gathering events which increased social mixingThe WHO in its Covid19 Weekly Epidemiological Update published Wednesday said that viruses in the B1617 lineage were first reported in India in October 2020The resurgence in Covid19 cases and deaths in India has raised questions on the potential role of B1617 and other variants eg B117 in circulation the update saidA recent risk assessment of the situation in India conducted by WHO found that resurgence and acceleration of Covid19 transmission in India had several potential contributing factors including increase in the proportion of cases of SARSCoV2 variants with potentially increased transmissibility several religious and political mass gathering events which increased social mixing and under use of and reduced adherence to public health and social measures PHSMAlso Read Expert panel suggests WHO should have more power to stop pandemicsThe exact contributions of these each of these factors on increased transmission in India are not well understood it saidThe update said that approximately 0137 of positive samples in India have been sequenced and uploaded to GISAID to identify SARSCoV2 variantsGISAID enables rapid and open access to epidemic and pandemic virus dataThe WHO update said that the prevalence of several VOCs including B117 and B1612 sublineages increased concurrent to the surge in Covid19 cases reported in IndiaSince the identification of these variants through late April 2021 B16171 and B16172 accounted for 2137 and 737 of sequenced samples from Indiardquo the update said adding that preliminary analyses conducted by WHO using sequences submitted to GISAID suggests that B16171 and B16172 have a substantially higher growth rate than other circulating variants in India suggesting potential increased transmissibility comparedThe update said that outside of India the UK has reported the largest number of cases sequenced as B1617 sublineages and recently designated B16172 as a national variant of concernGiving a global overview of the Covid19 situation the update said that the number of new Covid19 cases and deaths globally decreased slightly this week with over 55 million cases and over 90000 deathsWhile India continues to account for 9537 of cases and 9337 of deaths in the SouthEast Asia Region as well as 5037 of global cases and 3037 of global deaths worrying trends have been observed in neighbouring countries it saidThe highest numbers of new cases were reported from India 2738957 new cases 537 increase Brazil 423438 new cases similar to previous week the USA 334784 new cases 337 decrease Turkey 166733 new cases 3537 decrease and Argentina 140771 new cases 837 decreaseThe SouthEast Asia Region reported over 28 million new cases and just under 29000 new deaths a 637 and a 1537 increase respectively compared to the previous weekThis marks the ninth consecutive week the incidences of cases and deaths have been increasing in the regionThe highest numbers of new deaths were reported from India 26820 new deaths 19 new deaths per 100000 a 1537 increase Indonesia 1190 new deaths 04 new deaths per 100000 a 337 increase and Bangladesh 368 new deaths 02 new deaths per 100000 a 3437 decreaseEarlier this week the B1617 variant of the coronavirus first identified in India had been classified as a variant of concern at the global level by the World Health Organization WHODr Maria Van Kerkhove Covid19 Technical Lead at the WHO said on Monday that the Epi team and WHO lab team has been discussing with the WHO virus evolution working group this variant and everything that we know about it in terms of transmissibility and any studies that are being done in India as well as in other countries where this virus is circulatingThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever