A national health crisis

 With fresh coronavirus cases rising in India on a regular basis the country is certainly headed for a troubled period in the months ahead. India breached the 1,00,000 barrier on April 5 to become the world’s biggest Covid-19 hotspot. On April 16 India again created another record in daily cases of fresh coronavirus when the two-lakh barrier was breached. It seems that the spikes were uncontrollable when the 3 lakh COVID-19 cases was registered in a single day in India on April 21 and this was surpassed on April 22. From all accounts, it is undeniable that India is in now in the grips of a public health emergency as Coronavirus cases continue to break records on a regular basis. A public health emergency is reached in a situation which is “serious, sudden, unusual, or unexpected” and which may necessitate immediate international action. Since a peak of more than 93,000 cases per day on average in mid-September 2020, infections had steadily declined. By mid-February 2021, India was counting an average of 11,000 cases a day. The seven-day rolling average of daily deaths from the disease had slid to below 100. The steady decline in coronavirus cases had led to a feeling of triumphalism, according to K Srinath Reddy, the president of the Public Health Foundation of India. While the centre tom-tommed the “achievement” and attributing it to Modi’s leadership, people in general became complacent also. At the end of February, the Election Commission of India announced key elections in five states where 186 million people were eligible to vote for 824 seats. When health scientists had warned against complacency nobody and least of all the government wanted to pay any heed. By the end of February when foreign media reported that India was facing a new Covid wave, India’s darbari media had little inclination for the doomsdays sayers. This was probably because the media was focussed on prime minister Modi and ruling party big-guns holding massive rallies across poll-bound states. In less than a month, by March end, things began to unravel as India was in the grips of a devastating second wave of the virus and cities were facing fresh lockdowns. However, election rallies went on including the massive gathering of lakhs of devotees for the annual Kumbh Mela in Hardiwar. Unfortunately, the ideology of one nation, one law and one culture also practically meant one man-show. While the pandemic has not been revoked, it was important that India’s central leaders paid attention to genomic surveillance in January 2020 to detect variants. It appears, that coronavirus variants are believed to be driving the surge especially by February end in Maharashtra. Unfortunately, the country’s central health authorities initially denied any such possibility. This sense of complacency has become the turning point leading to uncontrollable spikes. Worse, social media feeds are full with videos of hospitals overflowing the covid patients, some having so share a bed or sleeping on corridors, hospitals facing acute shortage of oxygen, mortuaries overflowing with the dead. Drugs are being sold on the black market, and test results are taking days. Most epidemiologists predict more waves, given that India is evidently still far away from reaching herd immunity and its vaccination rate remains slow. However, instead of admitting it had prematurely declared victory over COVID, the centre has now literally washed its hands off by asking states to decide on what they need to do.