The Centre failed to anticipate the second Covid-19 wave despite warning signals and omitted to take steps that could have mitigated the devastation, a top government researcher has said, agreeing with other experts that India is paying the price for complacency. The health researcher, a member of the Centre’s national task force on Covid-19, said the surge and the nationwide bed and oxygen shortages had resulted from a complacency that ignored data from India and elsewhere suggesting “a big wave” was possible. “It is frustrating and it is sad — what’s going on cannot be just abruptly stopped,” the researcher, who requested not to be named, told