Dr Mandeep Singh Azad
SBI Research says that India should not be “complacent” as it’ll reach the peak of the second wave as “this could lead to a widespread increase in infection as has happened in the current wave”. The peak of the second coronavirus wave in India will come around mid-May with active cases reaching around 36 lakhs. As states go for partial or weekend lockdowns, SBI Research also revised India’s FY22 growth projection to 10.4 per cent real GDP and 14.2 per cent nominal GDP. It said based on other countries’ experiences, might reach its second peak when the recovery rate will be 77.8 per cent. “Given that every 1 per cent reduction in recovery takes around 4.5 days, it translates into around 20 days from now. Also, our estimate shows that every 1 per cent reduction in recovery rate increases active cases by 1.85 lakh.India on 25 March announced that a new variant of the coronavirus had been detected from samples collected from different states. A double mutation in key areas of the virus’s spike protein may make the virus more infectious and allow it to escape the immune system.The change in the virus is the only “logical explanation” behind the surge.
Health officials in the UK are now investigating whether a double mutant spreads more easily and evades vaccines.As things stand there is still not enough evidence to determine any causal relationship with India’s deadly second wave, and the variant is not currently listed by Public Health England as a “variant of concern” – a term used to describe the UK, Brazilian and South African variants. India started looking at mutations “fairly late”. “By December, India had done genome sequencing of only 5,000 samples. It wasn’t a concentrated effort.”In January, India put together a group of labs to speed up sequencing and these labs started functioning in February. “But unfortunately, the second wave started and the vision of sequencing roughly 5% of the total samples did not come through.” Sequencing becomes important in a pandemic as it allows scientists to monitor changes in the virus. “If you can catch a more infectious variant early on in a region, you can quickly put in public health measures to stop it from spreading wider in the community.But it’s “never too late” to take measures. “We need to strengthen safety protocols and rapidly vaccinate people, and also keep an eye on mutations. If we do all this, we could reduce numbers significantly.”
Lockdown only option now?
So, vaccination should continue apace but that will not break the transmission of the disease any time soon and the disease will continue to proliferate. New mutants can appear and delay matters further. As the health infrastructure which is already overwhelmed fails, the number of deaths will rise.
The only option left now is to effectively lock down for three weeks. After that the numbers may start declining. The lockdown is tough on workers but if properly implemented, spread of infections will decline.Businesses are opposed to a lockdown fearing further losses. But without that and with vaccination only a medium term strategy, the breakdown will cause social chaos and business will have to anyway shut down. A more brutal lockdown may be required later. A delay is fatal as the UK found out in the first wave in 2020. If we had acted in March itself the present precarious situation could have been avoided.A nationwide lockdown at this stage would be akin to using nuclear weapons, which are to be used only as the last resort and whose use will be detrimental to almost every walk of life and sector.
In mid-February, our daily caseload was at its lowest, fewer than 11,000 per day. But mutant viruses were already circulating at low levels before then. Sequencing data now tells us that what we’re calling the Double Mutant variant – the technical name is B.1.617 – was already seen in December, but it was very minor and nobody really paid attention to it. That, and the introduction of the U.K. variant (B.1.1.7) into India in January, finally caught up with us and led to the surge that started from about the third week of February.The variants are far more infectious and move faster. In the first wave, we would see one person in a family getting infected, and if they isolated themselves, the rest of the family was fine. Not so this time. Now, by the time you realize one person has it, the whole family is down.
Other options?
The second wave of COVID-19 has come back with ferocity, nobody could have imagined even a fortnight back. This has manifested the most in Delhi, where patients, their relatives, and doctors look helplessly as oxygen supply depletes quickly in hospitals after hospitals.Hopefully, the situation will be under control with supply bottlenecks being addressed, and also importing oxygen concentrators from abroad.However, the core problem of the COVID surge still remains. In an exponential rise in coronavirus infections in just three days, India has added a million new cases. That’s chilling. No lockdown can help. Besides, there is not enough empirical evidence to show that the lockdown, Janta curfew, night curfew, you call it by whatever name, does help.It only adds up to economic misery and affects the livelihoods of many who barely survive with wages. During the first national lockdown last year the cost of lockdown was put at around Rs 41,000 crore per day. This time, with lockdown limited to some states, and with varying degrees of restrictions, the cost could be much less. But if the surge in cases continues, and lockdowns get extended, or get more restrictive, we have to pay a heavy price, both in terms of life and livelihood. The only solution to fight Corona is to vaccinate, vaccinate and vaccinate. This will help curtail the spread of infection to some extent and save fatalities to a great extent.
The vaccination in India started on January 16 this year. So far we have administered around 14 crore doses (12 crore first doses and 2 crore second doses). At this pace, it will take years for India to get vaccinated.It is time policymakers and the national disaster management team sit together and find out how to ramp up existing domestic production and how to import from manufacturers abroad. India ratings have done a calculation that the cost of vaccinating will be Rs 67,193 crore, less than 0.4% of our GDP. The approach should be whatever it takes. We are at war with the virus and measures need to be taken on a war footing. We can park aside issues around pricing, who will pay- Centre, state for another day.This is a national disaster and the national government should drive the initiative. So far, we have vaccinated only 2% with both doses. Let’s put our best foot forward and ensure that a reasonably large proportion of our eligible population gets vaccinated by August 15, so that from the ramparts of Red Fort, we can declare our independence from COVID-19.
So this time my personal view is a small lockdown and door step vaccination so that there are no big lines outside the hospitals which may further lead to increase covid cases.The vaccination should be done by health workers and other trained workers to go door to door in PPE kits and vaccinate people.One option could be training of government employees and army personals for vaccination administration and later they can be used for door to door vaccination. We are at war and need to save our friends and family members. We are hearing many stories of loss of human lives due to this. Lets come together and save human lives.
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