When India is still far away from freeing its territory from the harrowing hands of the COVID-19 second wave, the country has now been pushed to brace up the news that it is not fond of - the rise of the third wave of the pandemic. The warning has come directly from the Principal Scientific advisor of the Indian government and it has come when the country is going through overwhelming grief. 

Vijay Raghavan, the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Central government has on Wednesday put out the fact that the second wave is not the final one and the country needs to prepare to tackle the third wave of the pandemic. Addressing the reporters, Vijay Raghavan said, "A phase three (third wave) is inevitable, given the higher levels of circulating virus but it is not clear on what time scale this phase three will occur. We should prepare for the new waves."

He added, "Variants are transmitted same as original strain. It doesn't have the properties of new kinds of transmission. It infects humans in a manner that makes it more transmissible as it gains entry, makes more copies, and goes on, same as the original." He further said, "Previous infection and vaccine will cause an adaptive treasure on the virus, a new kind of changes that will escape. Therefore, we should be prepared scientifically to take care of that." 

According to ANI, Vijay Raghavan stated, "Vaccines are effective against current variants. New variants will arise all over the world and in India too but variants that increase transmission will likely plateau. Immune evasive variants and those which lower or increase disease severity will arise going ahead". "Scientists of India and all over the world are working to anticipate these kinds of variants and act against them rapidly by early warning and developing modified tools. It is an intense research program, happening in India and abroad", he added. 

Raghavan was addressing the daily briefing in Delhi and during the media briefing, Joint Secretary of Union Health Ministry Lav Aggarwal has said that 12 states have more than 1 lakh active cases, 7 states have 50,000 to 1 lakh active cases, and 17 states have fewer than 50,000 active cases. 

He said, "Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, and Andhra Pradesh have around 1.5 lakh active cases." Agarwal said, "There are some areas of concerns. Bengaluru had reported around 1.49 lakh cases in the last week. Chennai has reported 38,000 cases. Some districts have recorded further and speedy COVID cases, which include Kozhikode, Ernakulam, and Gurugram." 

Agarwal said that 24 states and UTs have reported more than 15 per cent Covid positivity rate while 10 states have more than 25 per cent positivity rate. Maharashtra has a reported positivity rate of 24 per cent. According to reports, top Indian cities including Delhi, Lucknow, Bengaluru, and Ahmedabad are facing an unprecedented dearth of oxygen. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) has on Wednesday said that India has accounted for nearly half of the COVID-19 cases reported worldwide last week. The experts say that the government should have a proactive approach to addressing the warning from the Principal Scientific Advisor and it shouldn't let the warnings go vain like in the past, which was one of the strongest factors for the terrible resurgence of the pandemic. 

The health experts had warned the government earlier this year that there would be a second wave and they also had warned in March about the severity and adversary posed by the second wave to the nation. However, the Center had less reacted to such warnings and the leaders were busy in the campaign trials and rallies which had resulted to be superspreader events that were some of the incidents which gave space for the second wave.