Allowing religious gatherings was a bad idea: Govt panel director on Covid spike in Kerala
India TodayThe spike in Covid-19 cases in Kerala could have been avoided if the state had not resumed religious gatherings, said Anurag Agrawal, one of the directors of the government's genome sequencing monitoring agency INSACOG. Anurag Agrawal told India Today TV that allowing religious gatherings was a bad idea and the Kerala government should have only reopened essential services. "From 13,000 cases to 20,000 cases would not have happened if Kerala had not opened for religious gatherings," Anurag Agrawal said. Read: Southern worry: No slowdown in Covid uptick in Kerala While no new variant of SARS-CoV-2 has been identified in Kerala, Anurag Agrawal said the genome sequencing of samples from the state had shown that at least 90 per cent of the cases were of Delta variant, the mutant strain responsible for the severe second wave during April-May this year.