Climbing cases in the last few days : Second wave is on
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: March 26, 2021 -

Make no mistake about it. The second wave is on and the statistics should tell its own story.

On March 19 India recorded nearly 40,000 new cases with 39,726. Two days later, that is on March 21, the number had climbed to 43,846 and on March 22 to 46,951. On March 24 the number was a staggering 47,262.

All these figures were qualified with the words, 'biggest spike in over four months, highest since early November, highest in nearly four months' etc.

All indications that after a brief lull the virus is back, infecting at will and forcing many States to go in for localised lock down to break the spread of the virus.

Clearly the country is gripped in yet another spell of the virus, where it has been infecting at will and top this off with the State Bank of India compiling a report, 'India's current Covid wave could peak in 2nd half of April' and clearly the country is in the grip of yet another round of Covid spell after a lull of some few months.

The current wave should also more than testify that the world is still grappling with how the virus behaves and how it is running against time to fully understand its behaviour.

This observation is made in the backdrop of the fact that earlier the widely held belief was that the Indian Summer would help to a certain extent in containing the vigour of the virus and this was topped off with the observation that the virus could become more virulent during the cold Winter months.

However contrary to the earlier held beliefs, it was during the Winter months that the infection rate of the virus saw a sharp drop and now with Summer coming, the virus has become more and more active.

The statistics just enumerated above should underline this point. And if the virus is rampaging through certain parts of the country, can Manipur be left behind ?

After days of reporting in single digit increase, the State saw a sudden increase with 13 positive cases reported on March 23 followed by 10 on March 24.

The double digit spike came after days of Manipur reporting as less as 5 or even nil cases during the cold of the Winter.

As mentioned many times in this column, the virus is still out there, ready to infect and spread and it is with these words of caution that The Sangai Express has been reminding the readers to stick by the commandments, which is to avoid large crowd, to always wear a face mask while stepping outside, maintain personal hygiene and regularly wash one's hand with soap and water or with an alcohol based hand sanitiser and to always observe social distancing.

Now that the virus has started running amok in some parts of the country, it has become necessary for the Government to ensure that there are no loopholes.

The Government has already announced that air passengers coming from certain cities of the country would have to undergo RT-PCR testing at the airport.

This is fine and expected from the Government, but as questioned earlier in this column, how about passengers who come in by road ?

At the moment, nothing is heard of the Government making any arrangements to screen passengers coming in by road from either Dimapur, Guwahati or Shillong or along the Imphal-Jiribam highway.

It also stands that many passengers coming in by bus could have arrived at Guwahati from other parts of the country such as Delhi, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Chennai etc and taken a bus journey from Guwahati.

In other words, there could be many passengers coming in by road from places where the second wave is running amok. This is a point which should not be ignored.