Expensive lesson from the ‘Covid-19 tsunami’ in India

The blind spots in India’s response to the second wave of Covid-19 infection have become a strong warning to other countries.

India ‘broke the game’ in the second wave of Covid-19 India is being devastated by the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. In just 24 hours, the number of deaths due to the country’s pandemic reached 2,000 people and more than 300,000 new cases. The data for the new infections that India reported in January and February 2021 was overwhelmingly positive, as the country of more than 1.3 billion people recorded a dramatic drop from the first peak. by 2020 it will be more than 100,000 cases, down to less than 10,000 cases / day. The data reported later on cases and deaths both seem to have a miracle happening. With more than 312,000 new cases of Covid-19, on April 22, India broke the US record and became the country with the highest number of cases of Covid-19 daily in the world. Photo: New York Times. Jishnu Das, a medical economist at Georgetown University, USA, told NPR in the early February interview: “Not that India is testing less or the data is being underreported. At first, the number of infections skyrocketed and then suddenly disappeared. Hospital intensive care units (ICUs) have been reduced. All indicators represent the decline of the pandemic. ” However, a pandemic has not disappeared so easily. It may take years to figure out the reason for that illusion, but clearly India missed the true rate of cases earlier this year, even at a time when people were celebrating the decline. decrease of the disease, until it is too late. Although it is thought that the cause is the newly discovered strain of Covid-19 in India, this wave of rise is due to the failed combination of social management, weakness in India’s health system. and policy decisions. Before the second wave – likened to a tsunami – swept the world’s second most populous country, the virus was believed to have been suppressed in India, even some regions believed to be moving forward. community translation. Besides, as the vaccination is in progress, many people have reason to believe that the situation can be controlled. Experts say that it seems that India has made the same mistakes with other countries, including the UK, after the first wave reached its peak. The countries would then return to normal and would be severely attacked by the second wave. Dr. Chandrakant Lahariy wrote in an article for India Today last week: “The second wave of Covid-19 has come a few months after the second wave in other countries where the same situation happened somewhere. mid to late 2020. There is no reason to believe that the situation will be different in India. ” “Although lax in social governance is noted, from February to April 2021, the government is also not determined to enforce measures to prevent public health epidemics. With the enacted Covid-19, it was the policymakers and elected leaders that let loose for the crowds. Among them were festivals, like Holi at the end of the month. 3, Kumbh Mela in Haridwar (March and April), election demonstrations in 5 states (March to April) “. On the other hand, India, the world’s largest producer of vaccines, has repeated the same mistakes that have occurred in the US and elsewhere, assuming that vaccination alone is enough to control Covid-19. Prime Minister Narendra Modi then stressed that social distance remains an “ultimate optimal” measure. In fact, from the UK experience, the combination of active immunization, containment and surveillance offers the best chance of mitigating the impact of the pandemic. There are three key factors: First, without effective surveillance, Covid-19 will make use of those blind spots to spread again. Second, even in the midst of the immunization movement of India, when many people are not vaccinated Covid-19 remains a strong threat, possibly putting pressure on the health system. The third and final lesson is about leadership. Actions that promote improved public awareness and encourage prejudice against normalization have a real impact in public health emergencies that depend heavily on encouraging people to be more careful.