Key Considerations: India's Deadly Second COVID-19 Wave: Addressing Impacts and Building Preparedness Against Future Waves (original) (raw)
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Potential barriers to handle the second wave of COVID-19 in India
Second wave of COVID-19 has infected millions of Indians in a short period of time. India has faced significant challenge to anticipate, plan for, avoid, and handle the second wave of COVID-19 effectively, despite having experience with the first wave of COVID-19 and ample opportunities for preparation of the imminent second wave of COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of which the country suffered with rapid rise in number of cases, high mortality, exhaustion of infrastructure and manpower resources, which ultimately resulted in a big chaos in the country. This article highlights the potential factors that attributed to poor control of second wave of COVID-19 pandemic and their possible remedial measures.
COVID-19 in India - Impact and mitigation strategies
Biomedical and Pharmacology Journal, 2021
Background: The magnitude of the outbreak of corona virus disease (COVID-19) is exponentially increasing in world causing significant mortality and morbidity. Like other parts of the world, India is also struggling with COVID-19 crisis. As per data by the ministry of health and family welfare (MoHFW) till June 4, 2020, India had total 2,26,770 confirmed cases of COVID-19, out of which 1,10,960 were active cases, 1,09461 cured/discharged cases with 6348 deaths and one migration. Objective: This review deals with the impact of COVID-19 in India and the strategies adopted by theIndian government to mitigate the viral infection Data Sources: The studies published in the English language and indexed in PubMed were searched using MeSH terms COVID-19, impact, India, and health strategies. Data about strategies were acquired from the government of India official websites, government official news, and documents. Conclusion:Apart from the threat to lives, temporary unemployment, home-schooling of children, and lack of physical contact with family have highly impacted psychosocial health. To curtail the spread of COVID-19 India has implemented staged lockdown, social distancing norms, social media for public awareness, cluster containment, COVID-19 testing and treatment, vaccine trials and non- pharmacological interventions. India is advocating for the global collaboration to deal with relentless virus spread.
VULNERABILITY AND POSSIBLE RISKS OF COVID-19 SECOND WAVE IN INDIA: A CRITICAL REFLECTION
ANWESHAN: ASTHA'S MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, 2021
The COVID-19 has become a global health emergency which has affected millions of people around the globe. The pandemic started spreading across the world with severe effect and consequences as soon as it emerged. More than 3.01 million people have died globally, yet the count hasn't stopped. The COVID-19 situation has revealed the status of vulnerability among all the sections of people, and especially the weaker section, inability of the system to manage efficiently. It affected every system of the world starting from medical to environment. Every person, be it the President or Prime Minister or a common human being around the world, got affected by the virus. It also showed the importance of the food and the farmer in our life. Those who produce food and services for the world underwent severe crisis and hunger due to lockdown during this pandemic. This paper is an attempt to give a critical insight from the vulnerability, risk and resilience perspectives. It analyzes the trends of number of confirmed cases and deaths found in India during 2020 and 2021. It also analyzes the existing vulnerability and risk due to COVID-19 in India and estimates the possible risk that is likely occur in the COVID-19 second wave.
The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Public Health System Challenges in India
2021
This paper attempts to provide an overview of the COVID-19 pandemic situation in India and highlights various public health system challenges faced by the country in its efforts to control the pandemic. This paper is based on extensive review of literature conducted to stimulate pertinent descriptive information on COVID-19 pandemic and public health system challenges in India. The COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented challenges on India's public health system. India has implemented several strategies to mitigate the pandemic, but the rapid spread of the virus poses huge challenges of hitherto unseen scale on multiple fronts. India's public health system is chronically underfunded, leading to a shortage of COVID-19 treatment facilities. Even the available health resources are unevenly distributed across states resulting in huge disparities in emergency preparedness and management of the pandemic. Due to lack of robust primary health care system and effective public he...
BMJ Global Health, 2020
The low-and-middle-income country (LMIC) context is volatile, uncertain and resource-constrained. India, an LMIC, has put up a complex response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Using an analytic approach, we have described India’s response to combat the pandemic during the initial months (from 17 January to 20 April 2020). India issued travel advisories and implemented graded international border controls between January and March 2020. By early March, cases started to surge. States scaled up movement restrictions. On 25 March, India went into a nationwide lockdown to ramp up preparedness. The lockdown uncovered contextual vulnerabilities and stimulated countermeasures. India leveraged existing legal frameworks, institutional mechanisms and administrative provisions to respond to the pandemic. Nevertheless, the cross-sectoral impact of the initial combat was intense and is potentially long-lasting. The country could have further benefited from evidence-based policy and planning attuned to ...
INDIA'S COVID-19 CRISIS: CHALLENGES & STRATEGIES
International Journal of General Medicine and Pharmacy (IJGMP) , 2021
The COVID crisis in India has been very harsh. The country of 1.4 billion had passed over 28 million Covid-19 infections and over338, 000 deaths. Even government figures are likely underestimated due to problems with testing and reporting in the country. Reasonable estimates due to under reporting and lack of testing put these figures at three times higher. The total deaths may reach 1.7m by September 2021. The situation is bad in the main cities, but also that it is worse in the poorer and rural areas where lack of healthcare resources and the availability of the vaccination programme have made those populations most vulnerable to the disease. B.1.617 is now being seen as three variants of interest, B.1.617.1, B.1.617.2 and B.1.617.3, the middle one of which officially became a variant of concern (VOC). This variant seems more transmissible than 'wild-type' SARS-CoV-2. In traumatised India, saving lives has become the highest priority to be achieved by vaccinating 70 per cent of the adult population or 654 million people. Over 200m population have been vaccinated. India's monthly COVID vaccine manufacturing capacity is about 60-65 million doses against the final requirement of 1.45 billion doses to cover 70 per cent adults. India has been chronically underspending on health, and Covid-19 has put in stark focus the damage that can do. Investing huge amounts of money on health is crucial. India's health system is on the brink of collapse. Hospitals across the country are running out of oxygen supplies, ventilators and beds. Politics has played and continues to play a big part in the spread of the virus but it is a situation that needs a global approach.Tiding over a pandemic requires detailed preparation at multiple levels on the part of the State.
India's COVID-19 Episode: Resilience, Response, Impact and Lessons
Munich Personal RePEc Archive (MPRA) Working Paper, 2020
Despite the commonality of loss of lives, every pandemic has played a role in shaping the socio-economic and public health outcomes depending on the nature and the magnitude of the outbreak. In this study, we have attempted to make a preliminary assessment of COVID-19 impact on India and commented on the country’s resilience, response, impact and draw the lessons for the future. Although lockdown was necessary to stop the transmission, is showing and will show a greater impact on all spheres of human life considering the country’s poor resilient socio-economic institutions. Our concurrent assessment in the middle of the outbreak predicts that the socio-economic, demographic and health costs in India would be much higher than developed countries. Initiation of timely action from the very beginning (when the first case reported in Kerala) could have plummeted the potential transmission in every corner of the country to a large extent and could have avoided socio-economic crises that presently surfaced in the country. The study provides a strong message for initiating sector-specific measures alongside relief packages to reduce the damage not only for now but also to build a resilient system for socioeconomically vulnerable groups, health care services, and education infrastructure to face future pandemics. Otherwise, the pandemic like this can cost more.
COVID-19 Crisis in India: Threats and Opportunities
Complimentary & Emergency Medicine, 2021
Covid-19 catastrophe in India during the first half of 2021 has been a matter of great concern for policy makers, health institutions and the government. A country of 1.4 billion has passed 29m Covid-19 infections and 351,300 deaths. India is likely to have more new cases per day from the beginning of August 2021. Strains of Concern and the Strains of Interest (new and emerging mutants have contributed to increased morbidity and mortality. Emergence of mucormycosis (black fungus) during the ongoing pandemic is a bigger challenge to India, Action on a war-footing is needed to save lives by expanding and upgrading healthcare facilities more so in rural areas. 233 million doses of the COVID vaccine have been given in India. More than 45 million people have received two doses of the vaccine (fully vaccinated). The third Phase of the vaccination has coincided with an acute vaccine supply shortage across the country. India's monthly COVID vaccine manufacturing capacity is about 60-65 million doses against the final requirement of 1.45 billion doses to cover 70 per cent adults. Investing in health is crucial. India's health system is overwhelmed. Hospitals are running out of oxygen supplies, ventilators and beds. It is a situation that needs a global approach. Tiding over a pandemic requires detailed preparation at multiple levels on the part of the State. Vaccination drive to cover all is crucial. Global partners have a responsibility to support India in mass production of vaccines. Developed economies must support the scale-up of lab testing and genomic sequencing of virus. Developed nations should also provide technical assistance, help India in training its health professionals and provide logistic support (oxygen canisters/concentrators/cylinders/ medications/PPEs, establishing/operationalising field hospitals/quarantine centres), strengthening surveillance systems, data management like accurate reporting of cases and deaths besides temporality taking out manufacturing of life-saving vaccines/drugs from India to other parts of the world during the crisis.
Books & Ideas, 2020
The lockdown in reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic will have terrible consequences on an informal economy that relies first and foremost on movements and will deepen the socioeconomic inequalities that divide the country. The risk of people dying from hunger is extremely high and the death toll worsened by poor health infrastructures. In December, while Wuhan province was witnessing the beginning of the actual Covid-19 pandemic, India was facing massive and violent uprisings. Hundreds of thousands of Indians protested all over the country against the discriminatory anti-Muslim citizenship law that had just been passed by its parliament-the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)-and as a backlash violent attacks occurred on universities and Muslim working-class neighbourhoods by armed vigilantes. All this while the authorities were negating the presence of community transmission of the virus despite the first cases appearing way back in January to finally declare a 21-day lockdown on the midnight of 24 March, with only a 4 hour notice. This announcement, as in France, has triggered migration from the cities to the countryside, but of a completely different nature: in India, the internal migrant workers, day labourers and the poor-deprived of resources-have decided to return to their native villages. This tragic and deadly exodus of migrants fleeing cities is the most visible stigmata of the profound health, economic and social crisis that this threefold essay offers to analyse.