COVID appropriate behaviour, vaccination main shields against all mutations of virus: Expert

New Delhi [India], January 10 (ANI): Noting that there has been a sudden rise in COVID-19 cases across India, a health expert has advised people to follow COVID appropriate behaviour and get vaccinated saying that precaution is the only important thing to protect ourselves from the virus and all its mutations.
"For all variants of COVID-19, be it Delta, Omicron or any other variant, precaution is most important, which we call as COVID appropriate behaviour. This involves social distancing, hand hygiene, wearing masks and getting vaccinated. There is no medication as yet that can 100 per cent cure the disease. Prevention is the only thing that can protect us," Dr Sandeep Nayar, HOD, Respiratory diseases BLK Hospital told ANI.
According to the expert, India will witness a peak in COVID-19 in January after which the cases might rapidly decline as in the case of South Africa.
"COVID-19 cases have been rising for last 8-9 days (nationally); cases in Delhi, Mumbai are almost 4-5 times more. With the surge in cases, it is expected that a peak will be witnessed in January. Hopefully, a sharp decline will be there in peak as we saw in South Africa when cases soared suddenly and then declined," he noted.
India on Monday reported over 1.79 lakh cases of the virus and the daily positivity rate is above 13 per cent.
Meanwhile, Delhi has also reported a rampant surge in cases with over 20,000 cases being recorded for two consecutive days. A similar trend of increase in cases is also being reported from Maharashtra.
Emphasising the importance of vaccination against the disease, Dr Nayar said that India is on the right path.
"Now that we are also vaccinating the younger population in the age group 15 to 18 years and also discussions are on about the booster dose, India is on the right track. The vaccine prevents the disease from taking a severe form," he said.
"As seen in the past, we defeated polio and smallpox with vaccination. Similarly, vaccination is important at the moment," he added. (ANI)