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'Big threat': Rahul Gandhi warns citizens over India's rising Covid-19 cases
The graph shared by Gandhi showed that the rise in India's Covid-19 cases in the last week at 155,909 was the highest in 12 weeks.
As India continued to record a surge in the daily cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday tweeted another reminder to citizens asking them to remain vigilant.
The Congress leader also attached a graph, which showed that the weekly Covid-19 cases have increased by 33% in the country in a sharp surge since July last year. The graph shared by Gandhi showed that the rise in India's Covid-19 cases in the last week at 155,909 was the highest in 12 weeks.
"As warned earlier, #Covid19 continues to be a big threat. Please keep the guards up- wear masks and follow all precautions," Gandhi said in a tweet.
His appeal came on a day the country reported this year's highest single-day spike of 26,291 Covid-19 cases. India's disease tally is now over 11.38 million and its death toll stands at 158,725.
The opposition leader has constantly shared warnings and statistics on the Covid-19 disease outbreak in the country, asking citizens not to lower the guard against the viral contagion. In February this year, Gandhi accused the Centre of being "grossly" negligent and overconfident about the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying it was not over yet. His comments came after South African and Brazilian variants of the pathogen were detected in India. "GOI is being grossly negligent and over confident about Covid-19. It's not over yet," Gandhi tweeted.
In July last year, when India was still coming to terms with the rising trajectory in cases amid scaling up of efforts by authorities to ramp up public health systems, the Congress leader had warned India would record two million cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) by the second week of August, a day after the country reported a million infections.
“10,00,000 figures exceeded. If #COVID19 spreads at the same speed, more than 20,00,000 will be infected in the country by August 10,” Gandhi tweeted. “The government must take concrete, planned steps to stop the epidemic,” he added.
He backed his warning by citing a news report quoting the World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who had said that if concrete steps were not taken, the coronavirus pandemic would turn from bad to worse and that “there will be no return to the old normal for the foreseeable future.”
