DEVASTATING CORONA VIRUS IN INDIA

1)   New infections in a single day, it's the worst corona virus outbreak for any country. India's hospitals are close to collapse, they're running out of medication and oxygen. Almost 3,00,000 positive cases and 2,000 people died on daily basis in India now a days. India had come off relatively lightly during the pandemic but the number of infections has rocketed in recent weeks. The big question, some doctors blame more infectious variants others point to loose restrictions and people letting down their guard after hearing about the vaccine or following India's fairly unscathed brush with the first wave. In India thought they had got the better of the pandemic but now the country is being overwhelmed by a devastating new wave. No city is as badly hit as Delhi, cases explode hospitals, there are at breaking point.

2)   Some patients are forced to share a bed and there's an acute shortage of oxygen the city's Chief Minister says the system has reached its limits, the beds for covid-19 patients are filling up rapidly. Patients are being admitted to the hospitals, intensive care beds are in short supply and less than 100 ICU beds are available in Delhi. Authorities in Delhi had already imposed a lock-down over the weekend ordering orbit essential services to close local.

3)   Leaders hope the decision to step up the measures will help to mitigate the crisis. Some welcome the restrictions but others fear if they're not allowed to work the consequences could be drastic. It is essential that there's a lock down here because right now the virus is spreading a lot. The problem with the lockdown is daily wage earners who get 100 to 300 rupees a day, where will we go, how will we eat, where will we sleep, is the government going to come and give us this daily wage.

4)   Now with one in three tests in Delhi turning out positive, the government says it must act to avert a greater disaster. The fear is that the surging cases is due to a new more infectious variant of the virus. They're calling on people to be more disciplined about sticking to the rules but critics are also asking why religious festivals and political rallies that are fueling cases as participants return to cities like Delhi are still being allowed to go ahead for tens of thousands of families.

5)   Such questions come too late and if current trends persist then many more will find themselves in the same tragic situation. Rajiv Sasgupta is chair of the center of social medicine and community health at Jawaharlal Nehru University, just how tragic is the situation, what you have been experiencing well in short the situation is extremely distressing.

6)   Particularly for those who require bed or oxygen support or intensive care support, it is also very troubling given that the number of cases are continuing to rise and as the report just said the test positivity rate is nearly 30 percent. That goes on to show that this trend is going to continue for some foreseeable weeks the numbers are absolutely awful. Let's just take a little look at them out of one and a half billion people have been over 15 million cases.

7)   The most common explanation is one of negligence or complacency but that's not the entire explanation because even in the first phase it's not that the preventive behaviors or preventive practices were absolutely top order. They weren't as very limited behavioral surveys and the fact is that the surveys were limited has shown. What is important, is that the cases began to rise with coinciding with the import of the UK strain.

8)   First identified in the last week of December which significantly led to rise in the northern Indian state of Punjab as well as identification of local homegrown variants. We now know which later went on to become the double mutant as it's popularly known as the point is that these two have spread incredibly fast and have simply outstripped the health services.

9)   The national disaster management act remains in force in the country belies explanations why events of this scale were actually happening allowed by the local administrations, in fact several of the medical associations. Doctors bodies had written have already written to the election commission of India drawing attention to the rallies and it's only belatedly. the people who decide to go along to rallies and events well both certainly because the disaster management act is enforced.

10)   There's a very detailed standard operating procedure for various congregations, whether it's a wedding, whether it's a cremation. How much, how many seats for example can be occupied in a cinema hall, how many seats can be filled up in a bus, how many have to be empty in a cafe and so on and so forth. So, there is no death of these details of these procedures.

11)   What happened to lessons learned from the first wave and from so many other places that have had the third or fourth waves, This is only the second wave and we're talking about the biggest rise in infections worldwide. The experience both from this pandemic in other countries as well as earlier influenza pandemics is that the second wave almost inevitably is very big.

12)   That's largely because young adults get affected which is exactly the feature here in the earlier phase. In February in some of the districts of western Indian state including the financial capital Mumbai, in some of these states the test positivity rate has been as high as 50 percent. In fact, 50 plus that goes on to show that it is the variance spreading, very fast and not necessarily fatal though not necessarily more fatal but because they're more transmissible led to a burst of cases which completely outstripped medical services.

13)   Therefore, leading to some excess mortality and finally can offer Indians reading this article today, some sort of hope. The state and the courts have often taken a contrarian position of lives versus livelihoods, the supreme court also took sure motor cognizance of that urging the government to consider it as a national emergency. We hope that these emergency measures would be pretty put in pretty fast both state and central government.

14)   Local bodies have gone back to their drawing boards but it could still take a couple of weeks perhaps to offer some sucker magic descriptor. Therefore, strictly implement the SOPs of corona virus to save yourself and your loved ones for the survival of life.