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ICMR Chief Explains Difference Between Symptoms In 1st & 2nd COVID-19 Waves

Mumbai: ICMR chief Dr Balram Bhargava on Monday talked about differences in symptoms and their severity in the first and second coronavirus waves in India.

The country’s top medical body – said on Monday, adding that there is no change in the death rate between both waves.

Also Read: Lockdown In Delhi From 10 pm Tonight Till 5 am On April 26 Amid Rising COVID-19 Cases

Balram Bhargava told a virtual press briefing that a higher requirement of oxygen was found in the second wave

“If you see the symptoms, severity is very less this time. In this wave, we have witnessed more cases of breathlessness while in the last wave, symptoms like dry cough, joint pain, headaches were more… Very clearly, we find that the symptoms are much less. As I mentioned that the symptoms of joint ache, fatigue, muscle ache, loss of smell or sore throat are much less compared to the first wave. However, shortness of breath is higher in this wave,” he said.

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“There has been no change in mortality between the first wave and the second wave. All states are seeing similar trends because it is a nationwide data collection of national registry data which has been collected of only hospitalised patients, so this is 10,000 hospitalised patients that are being analysed,” added Dr Bhargava.

Rejecting the apprehensions over the accuracy of the RT-PCR test, the ICMR chief underlined that it measures two or more genes in the body and there is no shortcoming in detecting the COVID-19 mutant through testing.

“I would like to emphasise that the RT-PCR test that we are utilising, they measure two or more genes and they never miss a test… We have always used two or more genes for testing and therefore missing is absolutely impossible… It can find any kind of mutant because it measures two or more genes at different sites,” he told ANI.

Bhargava said that a “tremendous amount of laxity” regarding the pandemic and many instances of COVID-inappropriate behaviour and various unidentified mutation are the possible reasons for the spike in coronavirus cases.

“We have had a tremendous amount of laxity, COVID19 inappropriate behaviour and various unidentified mutation, of them some are of concern —UK, Brazilian and South African variants, which have been demonstrated to have higher transmissibility,” he said.

Meanwhile, India yet again reported the highest single-day spike of COVID-19 cases with over 2.73 lakh fresh infections and 1,619 deaths in the last 24 hours.

With this, the total number of positive cases in the country to 1,50,61,919. There are currently 19,29,329 active cases in the country as of Monday. The death toll reached 1,78,769 as of Monday.

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