India’s Covid-19 count recently crossed 1.5 million, with no end to the horror in sight. Indeed, modelling analysis from MIT predicts that by early 2021, India will have overtaken the US and Brazil to have the most Covid cases in the world, with 2,90,000 new cases every day. This would be the right time to assess errors made along the way, since crucial lessons for the future are inherent in them.
Remember that up to the point when the prime minister, with less than 4-hour notice, declared the world’s largest, longest and most restrictive lockdown in history, there had been less than 500 cases and 10 deaths from the Covid pandemic in India. What then caused the steep exponential rise to the current staggering numbers? Critics argue that India was the only country that lifted its lockdown at a point when the number of cases was steadily rising instead of stabilising.
The lockdown was a blunt tool, at best a temporary measure. A lockdown is an opportunity to increase preparedness and shore up medical facilities. But decades of neglect are impossible to fix during a few months of lockdown. Indeed, if the deaths of many cruelly disregarded migrants, and the toll from other non-Covid diseases which were neglected because people were unable, or too afraid, to seek medical help are factored in, many more lives may have been lost than saved by India’s lockdown.
This story is from the August 04, 2020 edition of The Times of India Mumbai.
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This story is from the August 04, 2020 edition of The Times of India Mumbai.
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