One In Three Indians Believe 4th COVID Wave In India Has Started: Survey

BENGALURU: According to a survey conducted by community social media platform LocalCircles, 1 in 3 Indians believe the 4th COVID-19 wave in India has already started. This particular question of the survey received 11,563 responses.

However, 55 per cent of people, out of 12,609 responses to the query, are absolutely confident that experts in India will be able to effectively handle the situation in the wake of the 4th wave. Twenty-nine per cent of the respondents said they are ‘somewhat confident’ and 4 per cent stated they’ve ‘little confidence’, while only 8 per cent sounded pessimistic about the ability of experts to adroitly deal with the 4th wave. Four per cent of people said they don’t have an opinion.

Tellingly, 83 per cent of citizens want accountability from the government and said the Health Ministry must mandatorily report about daily COVID cases for all districts. During the 2nd and 3rd waves, most of the districts officially reported daily cases as well as deaths. But as the cases began to decline, many states and districts stopped reporting daily cases.

Overall, the survey received 36,000 responses from citizens across 341 districts of India. Sixty-eight per cent of the respondents were men while 32 per cent were women. Forty-one per cent of respondents were from metros/tier 1 districts, 33 per cent from tier 2 districts, and 26 per cent were from tier 3, 4, and rural districts.

At present, India is registering under 3000 daily COVID-19 cases, and over 1500 of them are from Delhi and NCR region.

Almost all states have removed restrictions on movement and people have started moving more freely. Students are back to school, employees are working from offices and international commercial flights to India are operating at full tilt. While most states have lifted the mask mandate, states like Delhi, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh have brought them back in the view of rising cases in the past 2 weeks.

According to experts, the current surge in Delhi-NCR is being led by BA.2.12.1 sub-variant of the COVID-19 virus.