Fatal flaws

 Amid the raging surge in fresh coronavirus cases in India which continue to hit record levels for the past few weeks, several renowned doctors have expressed growing concern about the clinical behaviour of the new mutant virus. As India is ravaged by record-breaking COVID-19 surge, the doctors have warned of ‘impossibly bad’ situation. The second wave of coronvirus pandemic has exposed India’s ill-preparedness to tackle a scale never before imagined as health care infrastructure has come to near-breaking point. The ‘Indian strain’ of the coronavirus carries higher transmissibility similar to the UK variant, but there is little evidence so far of it being more lethal than the original virus, experts have said. India’s coronavirus surge has broken records, with Friday’s figures adding 386,452 confirmed infections to the tally and 3,398 deaths. India now accounts for one in four COVID-19 deaths in the world, but the numbers reported are widely believed to be under representative of the actual figures. Medical consultant Dr Arun N Madhavan estimated that the real rate of death would be five times higher than the official toll, but that number varied depending on the state. For instance, in Delhi, one in three tests have come back positive, while in places like Kolkata and Chandrapur, the test positivity rate had almost hit 50 per cent, demonstrating the outbreak had spread far more widely than confirmed cases suggest. India’s surging coronavirus cases should have been a loud wake-up call. Sure, the enormous spike in cases this spring came as a surprise. Just months before, an earlier rise in daily cases had dropped mysteriously, and India, home to some of the world’s biggest vaccine manufacturers, seemed well primed for mass immunization. It went further by exporting million tons of oxygen. However, by April, daily cases continue to break records crossing 1 lakh in Mid-April and by end of the month bypassing the 3-lakh mark. It may be recalled that the highest record was in 2020 that stood at 97,000. Soon, they were more than quadrupling that, setting a record for any nation on Earth and accounting for more than 39 percent of all new cases globally. India’s death toll is nearing 2,00,00, even with serious allegations of undercounting. Today, the situation in India is more than worrisome, it is a health catastrophe of monumental dimensions. Tragically, the worldwide praise for covid handling made the BJP at the Centre complacent and it went back to what it does best- elections rallies and winning states.A reflection of the disinclination to admit what is going wrong came in UP when the chief minister repeatedly denied claims from hospitals that the state is suffering a shortage of beds, medicines and liquid oxygen. Instead, Yogi Adityanath blamed these on “black marketing and hoarding”. He went a step further in threatening to use the draconian National Security Act and the Gangster Act to crackdown on “anti-social elements” spreading “rumours and propaganda” about shortages. Further alarm was raised about the government silencing critics after Twitter complied with a government directive to remove dozens of tweets critical of the Modi government while Facebook blocked the hashtag #ResignModi, a move it later tried to explain as an error. At such a time, what India needs is for the centre to reach out to all states and take them along. It should be a lesson for the Centre that the second wave requires more than sermons and it can begin by declaring an emergency health crisis.