Shoppers in Delhi's Meena Bazaar for winter shopping defying Covid protocols
Delhi's malls and markets were buzzing today with shoppers, a day after the national capital reported 107 Covid cases, its highest daily rise in six months.
Janpath Market and Meena Bazaar witnessed a large footfall on Monday as shoppers geared up for the winters and year-end festivities.
Shoppers in Janpath Market for winter shopping defying Covid protocols.
The rise in daily cases comes with the new variant Omicron spreading rapidly across the globe. In Delhi, the total number of Omicron patients jumped by 12 on Friday to reach 22.
As cases rise in the national capital, doctors have urged people to avoid large gatherings and follow social distancing protocols. Doctors fear that the pandemic may otherwise worsen, given the highly transmissible nature of the Omicron variant of coronavirus.
Health experts and doctors treating Covid patients at leading government and private facilities in Delhi have said that a "sense of complacency" has again crept in among a large section of citizens despite witnessing the "horrors of the second wave" of Covid infections earlier this year.
Scientists are worried about the existing vaccines not being very effective against Omicron. The new variant of COVID-19 is also more severe than Delta, the World Health Organisation said today.
"There is now consistent evidence that Omicron is spreading significantly faster than the Delta variant. And it is more likely people vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19 could be infected or re-infected," WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a media briefing.