If the first wave of Covid took into its grip the old people particularly those with co-morbidities, the second ongoing wave of the pandemic is proving risky to more number of younger people as they might have begun going out for economic reasons and also because of some variants of SARs-COV-2 prevalent in the country.
This was stated by the ICMR chief Dr Balram Bhargava on Tuesday in response to a question on whether the younger population were getting more affected.
He said, “The comparison of data during the first and the second wave of Covid-19 has shown that there is not much age difference.
People above the age of 40 are more vulnerable for adverse outcomes.
"We have found that younger people are getting slightly more involved because suddenly they have gone out and there are variants also prevalent in the nation which may be affecting them as well," he said.
India has been reeling under a calamitous second wave of the coronavirus infection.
An early trend of decline in daily new COVID-19 cases and deaths has been noted in the country even as Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Odisha, and Punjab are among the 16 states still showing continued increase in daily cases, the government said on Tuesday.
Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana were among the 18 states and union territories showing continued plateauing or decrease in daily new Covid-19 cases.
Joint Secretary in the Health Ministry Lav Agarwal, however, said Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Punjab, Assam, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Tripura were among the 16 states and union territories showing continued increasing trend in daily new Covid-19 cases.