India logged another grim global record of 412,262Covid-19 cases on Thursday as officials said a "double mutant variant" could be "linked" to the deadly second wave sweeping across various states.
The South Asian country registered 3,980 Covid-19 deaths in the past 24 hours, making it the deadliest day in the country since the pandemic began and raising the death toll to 230,168, data from the government showed.
India became the first country to cross 400,000 daily cases on Saturday. It has seen more than 300,000 cases daily over the past fortnight, taking its caseload past 21 million, the second after theUnited States. Hospitals in cities including Bengaluru are scrabbling for beds and oxygen as they desperately fight the surge in infections, while morgues and crematoriums struggle to deal with a continuous flow of bodies.
The government's top scientific adviser, K Vijay Raghavan, warned that a third Covid-19 wave was inevitable and admitted for the first time that a "double-mutant" variant detected in the country could be fuelling the virus surge. "A phase three is inevitable, given the high levels of circulating virus," he said at a briefing on Wednesday evening. "But it is not clear on what time scale this will occur. We should prepare for a new wave." Lockdowns ordered in several states have failed to bring down the infections so far. India's vaccination drive has also slowed down dueto shortages of jabs and wastages, with just 1.9 million inoculations in the past 24 hours.
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