Jammu
The national vice president of Indian Medical Association (IMA), Dr Navjot Dahiya, has called Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, a “super spreader” of the coronavirus for holding political rallies in poll-bound states and allowing Kumbh Mela to take place amid the second wave of the pandemic.
Dr Dahiya in a statement said, while the medical fraternity is trying hard to make people understand mandatory Covid-19 norms, Narendra Modi did not hesitate to address big political rallies, tossing all Covid-19 norms in the air.
He pointed out that when the first patient of the coronavirus was found in India in January 2020, the prime minister, instead of making arrangements to tackle the infection, organised gatherings of over one lakh people in Gujarat to welcome the then US President, Donald Trump.
The vice president of the IMA said that now when the second wave of Covid-19 was yet to reach its peak, the entire health system was failing as Narendra Modi did not take any step to strengthen it during the entire year.
The international media coverage on the pandemic in India has also criticised Modi and his ‘stark failure’ in handling the coronavirus crisis.
Dr Dahiya also said the scarcity of medical oxygen has become the reason for the deaths of many Covid-19 patients. He said that several projects for installing oxygen plants were still pending with the Union government for clearance, but no heed was paid to such an important need by the Modi government.
He maintained that the impact of the pandemic was visible with bodies piling up in crematoriums and long queues of ambulances outside hospitals in almost every city of the country.
Even on the issue of farmers’ agitation against farm laws, the prime minister did not act in a responsible manner and [allowed] the presence of huge gathering of farmers without solving their issues, causing a serious threat of Covid-19 spread, Dahiya added.
The IMA vice president also criticised the government for backing Yoga guru Ramdev’s Coronil, which the Patanjali Ayurved claims to be the “first evidence-based medicine” to fight Covid. But the product was disclaimed by World Health Organization, he said.
In February, Ramdev had claimed that a WHO team had visited his company and given Coronil the licence for sale in more than 150 countries. However, his claim was refuted by the WHO, which clarified that it did not review or certify the effectiveness of any traditional medicine.
India on Tuesday registered 3,23,144 new coronavirus cases in a day, taking the total number of infections to 1,76,36,307 since the pandemic broke out in January 2020.
While the single-day infection count is slightly less than Monday’s count, India has registered more than 3 lac cases for the sixth day in a row. With 2,771 deaths, the toll went up to 1,97,894.—KMS
