<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
At the time of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, people were concerned about the virus of which little was known and so testing was the way to ensure safety. That was when vaccines were yet to be developed and approved. However, even then, there was a huge debate over the number, between that given by eminent epidemiologists against the official record provided by the ministry of health and family welfare. A report in the Telegraph, carried by The Print, on May 15,2020 revealed that while the ICMR had put the COVID-19 figure at around 86,000, its own sero survey report placed the figure to around 60 lakhs. However, ICMR later back tracked on this and asked the sero survey team to hold back uncomfortable data. This was clearly factual hesitancy on the part of the MoHFW and ICMR. Even months before the 2020 pandemic, a study by a group of noted scientists under the Indian Institute of Science(IISc) Bengaluru, predicted that by January 1, 2021, India would have possibly reached close to 3 crore infected cases (over 60 lakh ‘active’ cases and 10 lakh fatalities). The group also predicted that the pandemic was not expected to ‘peak’ before March 2021. Currently, India’s daily surge in fresh coronavirus cases has been breaking all-time records for the past few weeks. From the peak of more than 93,000 cases per day on average in mid-September 2020, infections steadily declined and by mid-February 2021, India was counting an average of 11,000 cases a day. The centre appropriated credit for “stopping\/breaking the transmission chain”. However, this proved premature as the prediction by the IISc study group came true. India’s record of one lakh cases was recorded on April 4, 2021 making it the second nation after the US to reach the figure. The spike continued and by April 15 India recorded around 2 lakh fresh daily cases. This was breached in the next few days and on April 21, daily coronavirus cases touched 3 lakh and presently it has touched 3.5 lakh cases. Coronavirus variants are not the only driving factor for the surge.The continued spikes are a reminder of past concerns that community transmission had already taken place in India even by March-April 2020. Unfortunately, the country’s central health authorities had denied any such possibility. On the contrary, as early as March 28,2020 , the Union Health Ministry instead only acknowledged that there was “limited community transmission.” How can a pandemic be fought when the government is in denial mode? The fact is that virologists and epidemiologists had all along said that community transmission has already taken place in 2020. The denial is mute testimony to the politicisation of covid pandemic. The central leaders have been diverting the nation’s attention from real issues to emotive issues. Today, covid patients are sleeping on hospital corridors, wheel chairs while hospitals have no oxygen and health centres facing vaccine shortage. The Centre has instead absolved itself of any blame whereas everything was done as per its guidelines. The centre wants credit for success and left the states to take the blame. No state was allowed to take its own decision, out of the periphery of the central guideline such as foreign and inter-state air travel, inter-state movement. Even if states are allowed to take decisions, they still need the nod from the Centre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Systems failure<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[685],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209512\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}