Current Corona Scenario in India
As of today, India has over 380,000 cases and it’s growing at around 13,000 a day which means India is 3rd largest in terms of daily increases and fourth-largest both in terms of total cases and daily deaths. Many people in India look at these statistics and ask themselves the question are we losing the fight against the virus?
It’s very early to state anything in the battle and so we have to take the long view even under the most optimistic of scenarios. We are going to be fighting this pandemic until probably the middle of next year and it’s hard for anybody to see anything much earlier than that. We have a long time to calibrate our response. Not to worry so much about whether we are losing or winning. It is a time to have an action plan to go through this entire pandemic in a way that minimizes loss of life, minimizes harm to the economy.
India has over 380,000 cases the government insists repeatedly that we are not in community transmission. In fact, the truth is the government has gone one step further. Community transmission is a simple term. At any given moment in any city or village or town diseases transmitted from somebody else living in that community.
One should focus on a national and local strategy to tail it. We should focus on the number of undetected infections that must lie behind this figure. The death figure is an assumption because even in the most advanced countries surveillance for deaths is not perfect and so with India too. The peak could be well into November or maybe even later depending on what policy changes are made. But in any condition put a set of questions about the statistics that the government alone can do it? There is no evidence that India has a milder strain or a deadlier strain. There is no evidence regarding more natural immunity to Indians have. It’s often said that the fact that the BCG vaccine is given on a compulsory basis in India has given India a level of immunity that other countries don’t. Coronavirus so far there is no evidence that the BCG vaccine is protective. so far but let’s dig into it a bit more there is evidence that BCG vaccines can be what we call immunomodulatory meaning that with some respiratory viruses people who’ve gotten a BCG vaccine sometimes do appear to have milder forms of the disease
What Indian strategy should be for Corona?
- To protect the elderly protect those with comorbidities.
- Lead a normal life wearing of course masks and keeping social distancing. The people do not spend a lot of time together in close proximity. There is emerging evidence that being outdoors is better than being indoors so a large crowd indoors is much more dangerous than a large crowd outdoors.
- Aggressive testing tracing isolation strategy can work to bring the level of the virus down in a community and bring the virus outbreak under control. We must get rid of any large gatherings.
- Along with urban containment zones which are called hotspots in India, we need to also spend perhaps as much time on the rural areas where the migrants might have taken the virus and where it could spread particularly in areas where our health infrastructure is weak. so do we need to make sure that the ramping up testing is done strategically and sensibly to cover both existing urban hotspots as well as potential future robots?
- India’s healthcare infrastructure is quite weak and this is not a new phenomenon. On the other hand, India has a large infrastructure of informal healthcare workers the people that sometimes will get called quacks. Trained them and utilize them as front warriors. Along with the final year medical students can also be trained and utilized as front warriors.
- Protect health care workers because they are very less and if we lose them then our ability to fight this virus becomes quite problematic
India is one of the most advantaged in its incredible capacity on various issues so it has a great technology industry. In house production of facilities needed and become ATMANIRBHAR.
