Dr NK Arora advises people not to take COVID-19 'for granted' as China witnessing surge in infections

New Delhi [India], March 15 (ANI): As China is reporting a surge in coronavirus infections, Dr NK Arora, chairman of India's COVID-19 Working Group of NTAGI on Tuesday said that people should not take the disease "for granted" because new variants can occur at all times in future.
"Any kind of complacency at this time will not be good just because Omicron wave has subsided so early. We cannot take it for granted and presume that nothing will happen in the future. New variants can occur at all times," Dr Arora told ANI.
He also said that INSACOG is expected to expand its surveillance.
"The surveillance of INSACOG is already taking place at high intensity. Now there is a proposal to expand the INSACOG surveillance to sewage surveillance just like polio and that sewage material will also be undergoing analysis for COVID viruses," he said.
Speaking about whether the outbreak of COVID-19 cases in China can affect India, he said, "We are waiting for further information about the Chinese outbreak whether it is because one of the already circulating variants or there are its sub-lineages or any new variant which has come in."
Further, the health official advised people to be watchful about COVID-19 all the time.
"One has to be vigilant at all times. Till all the countries across the world are in a stage where we say now the pandemic has come to a halt. But at the moment, it will be premature to do any of those things," he added.
Meanwhile, China identified 3,507 new locally spread cases in the last 24 hours, up from 1,337 a day earlier, The Washington Post reported citing China's National Health Commission.
China has also imposed various rules to keep the COVID-19 cases away from the country since the deadly initial outbreak in the city of Wuhan in early 2020 but the fast-spreading variant known as "stealth omicron" is testing China's zero-tolerance strategy. (ANI)