Sohail Khan
Last year, India witnessed the 1st wave of Covid 19 Pandemic which roughly lasted between June to Nov. Even though India went to a early lock down in March, April and May, India was still not witnessing any wave of cases. Most initial Cases during the lock down period were limited to few clusters. But as soon as the lockdown restrictions were relaxed ,the virus began spreading freely & from June to Nov, India witnessed the first wave of Pandemic. By December and January 2021,cases in India had declined and this decline in cases by mid January lead to complacency amongst all key stakeholders and due to series of mistakes committed by GOI, State govts, local administration and more importantly by the public, India currently is in the middle of deadly 2nd wave as predicted by Epidemiologists & this rapid ascent of the second wave has become a major source of concern for the general public , the government and health administrators
In the course of any pandemic, epidemiologists believe that 2nd wave happens to be the strongest wave and hence it is very essential to keep your guards up, especially when you see the first wave to be declining but contrary to the scientific advice, govts and the public became complacent, lowered their guards against pandemic, abandoned the covid appropriate behaviour, thereby pushing the country into a deadly course of 2nd wave of infection
It is a well established fact that Mask wearing, Hand hygiene and Physical distancing is best vaccination against pandemic as they act as Social vaccine but by the end of last year, the public was already displaying fatigue with regards to following covid appropriate behaviour and the declining cases made the people more emboldened who then abandoned all the safe practices .While it is understandable that public is going to become complacent and suffer from fatigue, it is inexcusable that our governments have failed to anticipate the 2nd wave, despite being predicted. While the centre shifted the responsibility of placing restrictions on the state govts, the states carried out a hasty reopening of the economy, especially unnecessary reopening of school, colleges and offices, along with this a large assembly of crowds in marriages ,political rallies, religious occasions and festivals. They have all added the rapid surge of infection
An analysis of the ongoing 2nd wave clearly reveals that the rise has been much faster and doubling time of the cases has nearly reduced by half .Also it has been observed that more younger peope are getting infected that too with high severity. A comparative analysis of 1st and 2nd wave shows that the R value of the initial ‘variant’ of the virus of the first wave was 2-3, meaning, one infected person would infect 2-3 others; the variant(s) causing the second wave has a higher R value >4
THE STRATEGY AHEAD
Considering all these dynamics associated with infectious disease, it is very essential for the public to be aware and also the responsibility of the government to not let the guards down too early and to keep encouraging public to follow covid 19 protocols. It is because, otherwise the suffering being inflected by the public is going to increase further in the coming months
This pandemic is here to stay with us for a considerable time and until vaccine provide effective coverage, it is very important for the public to adopt social vaccine and follow appropriate behaviour such as wearing masks, hand hygiene, physical distance and couch since a total lock down is going to cause immense sufferings and leads to further increase in socio economic inequalities, it is very essential to avoid worst case scenario. So the only way to avoid such disastrous lock down would be to adopt social vaccine and to parallely scale up the vaccination programme
(The author is associated with J&K RTI movement and member of JKIFTS
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