Lessons from a pandemic

An honest reckoning can prepare India for the next crisis

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March 24 marks five years since the Union government announced the 21-day nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19). Memories of the two years that followed may have faded from the public discourse. But the management of this first global public-health crisis since World War II holds lessons that could be usefully codified into a set of standard procedures for pandemics that leading epidemiologists predict are likely to rise in frequency in our increasingly globalised world. Doing so demands an honest reckoning of missteps and successes. No country was adequately prepared for the pandemic, including those with sophisticated public-health systems.

However, once the vaccines arrived, India managed to inoculate at speed and scale, which helped contain the spread and, more importantly, deaths.