Lockdown needed to break the chain and get ahead of the trajectory, says top White House Covid adviser.
As India grapples with the world’s worst Covid-19 outbreak with more than 22 million total cases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, top White House coronavirus adviser, suggested India should lock down.
“You’ve got to shut down. I believe several of the Indian states have already done that, but you need to break the chain of transmission, and one of the ways to do that is to shut down,” Fauci said on ABC Sunday.
Such a lockdown was needed to “get ahead of the trajectory of the outbreak,” the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN News18 in a separate interview Friday.
“I don’t mean shutting down for six months,” he said. “You just need to break the chain of transmission. And one can do that by shutting down to the extent possible for two, three weeks, four weeks.”
“And then, as soon as the cases start coming down and you vaccinate more people, then you can get ahead of the trajectory of the outbreak,” Fauci added.
India reported 366,161 new cases on Monday — the first time daily infections have dipped below 400,000 since May 6, according to Indian health ministry data.
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The health ministry also reported an additional 3,754 virus-related deaths on Monday, after two consecutive days of reporting more than 4,000 fatalities.
India has now recorded 246,116 total Covid-19 deaths — among the highest in the world — with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington estimating that by August, India may have reached 1 million deaths, CNN reported.
The Indian Medical Association (IMA) said Sunday it had been calling for a “complete, well-planned, pre-announced national lockdown” for the past 20 days.
The lockdown, it said, needed to last about 10 to 15 days in order to give the country’s overstretched health system time to “recoup and replenish both the material and manpower.”
The IMA said “sporadic night curfews” and other restrictions imposed by several states “have not done any good.”
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Meanwhile, the World Health Organization’s chief scientist told AFP the Covid-19 variant spreading in India, known as B 1.617, is more contagious and is contributing to the crisis there.
Soumya Swaminathan warned “the epidemiological features that we see in India today do indicate that it’s an extremely rapidly spreading variant.”
She also said large gatherings, social mixing, the relaxation of mask-wearing and other protection measures were also to blame.
The variant, first identified in India in October, is listed by WHO as a “variant of interest” — but Swaminathan said it could soon be labeled a “variant of concern,” which indicates it is more dangerous than the original strain.
“B 1.617 is likely to be a variant of concern because it has some mutations which increase transmission, and which also potentially could make (it) resistant to antibodies that are generated by vaccination or by natural infection,” she said.
As infections increase, at least 24 of India’s 36 states and union territories, including the Capital New Delhi are under full Covid-19 lockdowns.
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