Covid-19 Wrap-up: Non-compliance of safety norms rises, triggers concern

As the festival season arrived, importance of masking and social distancing appears to have gone for a toss in the country

With India witnessing a decline in daily Covid-19 cases since the last couple of months, people have started lowering their guard in wearing masks and maintaining social distance norms. A survey by a digital community-based platform that has measured basic Covid-19 safeguards found that only 13 per cent people rated mask compliance in their area and district as effective while just 6 per cent termed social distancing norms as beneficial.

Also, it appears that the low compliance to Covid-19 norms has already started showing effects as Mumbai's R-value, which reflects how rapidly the Covid-19 pandemic is spreading, increased to over 1 in September-end, according to a study. The R-value of Mumbai was 0.70 between August 10 and 13. It rose to 0.95 between August 13 and 17, went up further to 1.09 between August 25 and September 18, and dropped to 0.95 between September 25 and 27. However, it again rose to 1.03 between September 28 and 30, as per the R-value calculated by researchers of the Chennai-based Institute of Mathematical Sciences.

Meanwhile, a renowned virologist has opined that India is still not ready to initiate unlock as the vaccinated population in the country is "very low". "Less than 20 per cent of your population is vaccinated and 30 per cent of your population under the age of 18 are not yet eligible for vaccination. So this means that you don't have the sort of armour that you need to safely reopen in that way," Dr W Ian Lipkin said.

On the positive side, India is inching closer to reach the milestone of administering 100 crore vaccine doses across the country. The cumulative Covid-19 vaccine doses administered in the country surpassed the 95-crore mark on Sunday.

On Monday, India recorded 18,132 new coronavirus infections, the lowest in 215 days, taking the country's total tally of cases to 3,39,71,607, while the national Covid-19 recovery rate has increased to 98 per cent.

However, the festival season is a crucial period for the nation as there are concerns that the country may witness a spike in new cases during or after the festivities end. An example of the same is seen in Odisha as the state witnessed a slight rise of Covid-19 cases, reporting 652 fresh infections on Sunday, 126 more than the previous day.

While India has decided to resume vaccine exports, it imposed a three-month restriction on the export of three types of injection syringes, apprehending a shortage for the Covid-19 vaccination scheme after ignoring syringe-makers’ repeated request on future planning and advance commitment to deal with such shortage in the world’s biggest adult vaccination programme.

Reiterating the need to be cautious during the festival season, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya warned that Covid-19 containment can derail if festivals are not celebrated following protocols. He also asked 19 states to escalate their inoculation pace so that India can achieve administering 100 crore vaccine doses in the next few days.