Kerala shouldn’t have allowed religious gatherings: Govt expert after COVID spike

With Kerala grappling with a fresh surge of COVID-19 cases, a government expert has said that the resurgence of cases could have been avoided if the government had banned religious gatherings.

Speaking to India Today, Anurag Agrawal, one of the directors of the Centre’s genome sequencing monitoring agency INSACOG said that instead of opening up places of worship and allowing religious gatherings, the Kerala government should have only reopened essential services.

“From 13,000 cases to 20,000 cases would not have happened if Kerala had not opened for religious gatherings,” Agrawal told India Today.

Cautioning that the cases would continue to spiral in the state, Agrawal, however, said that Kerala was behind the pandemic curve as compared to Northern states.

Also read: Kerala’s ‘breakthrough infection’: Has Central team got it wrong?

The Kerala government in June eased COVID-19 norms to open places of worship for devotees, albeit in a regulated manner. As per the new norms, only 14 people were allowed at a time in temples, mosques and churches. It was a time when the state was recording a test positivity rate between 8 per cent and 16 per cent.

Agrawal said 90 per cent of the cases were found to be of the Delta variant during a recent genome sequencing of samples from the state. The mutant strain of COVID-19 was responsible for the disastrous second wave of the infections this year.

A recent and fourth round of sero survey by ICMR found that 42.7 per cent of residents of Kerala had antibodies for COVID-19 against a national average of 67.7 per cent.

Agrawal said the only way to avoid further infections was to ramp up the vaccination drive, as Indian vaccines have the potential to give around 60 per cent protection against the virus.

Stating that the second wave is yet to get over in several states, the INSACOG director said the third wave, predicted to arrive by September-October may not be as severe as the second wave.

“Previously recovered people will not get severe disease, hence the third wave will not be very severe…but all this will change if the virus changes its form,” he said.