As on 5th May 2020, we crossed the du­bi­ous mile­stone of sur­pass­ing Italy, the famed covid19 hotspot, in the to­tal num­ber of con­firmed cases. In a week’s time, In­dia is poised to cross 3 lakh covid19 pos­i­tive cases. Much is be­ing made of the early im­po­si­tion of lock­down in In­dia. How­ever, the facts be­lie such a claim. It needs to be re­called that the cases of covid19 in­fec­tions were be­ing re­ported in In­dia as early as late Jan­u­ary 2020. It’s time that the ad-hoc man­ner in which a se­ri­ous pub­lic health cri­sis is be­ing han­dled needs is brought un­der scrutiny. In­dia needs to look at Viet­nam with zero ca­su­al­ties and Greece which man­aged the pan­demic well de­spite eco­nomic slug­gish­ness, ex­plains pub­lic com­men­ta­tor Ku­mar San­jay Singh.

EMPHA­SIZ­ING THE IM­POR­TANCE OF PLAN­NING, SUN TZU, in his cel­e­brated book on strat­egy “The Art of War”, wrote: “Now, the gen­eral who wins a bat­tle makes many cal­cu­la­tions in his tem­ple ere the bat­tle is fought” and “The gen­eral who loses a bat­tle makes but few cal­cu­la­tions be­fore­hand.”

Judged from this yard­stick our pol­icy to con­trol the con­ta­gion seems to fall in the sec­ond cat­e­gory. Lack of fore­thought in sud­denly de­clar­ing a lock­down and its ad­verse im­pact on the mi­grant work­ers is re­ceiv­ing the de­served at­ten­tion of the cri­tiques.

In­ter­na­tional con­cern over the con­ta­gion was al­ready pal­pa­ble. Coun­tries such as Viet­nam and Greece, which are not ex­actly flush with re­sources, re­sponded with alacrity. Re­stric­tions on pub­lic move­ment, cel­e­bra­tions and norms of phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing were adopted in a planned and de­lib­er­ate man­ner by Feb­ru­ary 2020. Thus, both the coun­tries es­caped the ter­ri­ble fate of los­ing their cit­i­zens to the con­ta­gion.

 Read also: Ma­jor Covid-19 pub­lic health cri­sis looms over Delhi and In­dia in July

In­dia lost pre­cious time as be­tween Jan­u­ary to March gov­ern­ment was busy or­ga­niz­ing pub­lic events as­so­ci­ated with Pres­i­dent Trump’s wel­come itin­er­ary, op­er­a­tion Ka­mal in Mad­hya Pradesh and en­forc­ing CAA which re­sulted in a con­fla­gra­tion.

With nearly 10000 new in­fec­tions per day, the task of trac­ing and sep­a­rat­ing per­sons that are at risk is bound to be­come in­sur­mount­able. Ex­perts are prog­nos­ti­cat­ing that covid19 hotspots, i.e met­ro­pol­i­tan cen­tres such as Mum­bai, Delhi, Chen­nai, Cal­cutta, and Ahmed­abad, may have be­tween 50 to 60 per cent of their pop­u­la­tion in­fected, in about six weeks time.

It was in this back­ground of hy­per­ac­tiv­ity that the de­c­la­ra­tion of a lock­down in the last week of March 2020 man­i­fested it­self with a sud­den­ness that took even state gov­ern­ments un­aware and un­pre­pared. Lack of plan­ning dis­rupted not only the lives of or­di­nary cit­i­zens, work­ers and farm­ers but also the econ­omy.

Ab­sence of plan­ning en­sured that the eco­nomic hard­ships of the lock­down were re­duced to noth­ing, as it failed to curb the con­ta­gion. Short­ages of PPE, etc., even for the health­care providers is symp­to­matic of the pol­icy level in­ad­e­qua­cies in han­dling a pan­demic. There are re­ports in the me­dia that the con­tracts for man­u­fac­tur­ing PPE were made only af­ter the an­nounce­ment of a 21 days lock­down 01.

With such ut­ter con­fu­sion, it should­n’t come as a sur­prise that the lock­down, while it flat­tened the GDP, failed in con­trol­ling the con­ta­gion. And now with the threat of ur­ban star­va­tion loom­ing, the pol­icy for­mu­la­tors are do­ing away with lock­down mea­sures.

We are faced with the grim re­al­ity of re­lax­ation of health safety mea­sures at a time when the rate of spread of covid19 in­fec­tions is still on the rise.

As per data re­leased by the In­dian Health Min­istry, un­der the Na­tional Health Pro­file, on 19 June 2018, there is one gov­ern­ment hos­pi­tal bed per 1,844 pop­u­la­tion and one state-run hos­pi­tal for every 55,591 pop­u­la­tion

As on 5th May 2020, we crossed the du­bi­ous mile­stone of sur­pass­ing Italy, the famed covid19 hotspot, in the to­tal num­ber of con­firmed cases. In a week’s time, In­dia is poised to cross 3 lakh covid19 pos­i­tive cases.

With nearly 10000 new in­fec­tions per day, the task of trac­ing and sep­a­rat­ing per­sons that are at risk is bound to be­come in­sur­mount­able. Ex­perts are prog­nos­ti­cat­ing that covid19 hotspots, i.e met­ro­pol­i­tan cen­tres such as Mum­bai, Delhi, Chen­nai, Cal­cutta, and Ahmed­abad, may have be­tween 50 to 60 per cent of their pop­u­la­tion in­fected, in about six weeks time.

With ac­cess to hos­pi­tals be­com­ing dif­fi­cult even at less than 3 lakh in­fec­tions, one can imag­ine the con­se­quences of such an ex­plo­sion in the rate of in­fec­tions.

While it is cor­rect that as of now the rate of mor­tal­ity in In­dia is low. How­ever, it will be sober­ing to re­mem­ber that ac­cess to hos­pi­tals and med­ical su­per­vi­sion has a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on the rate of deaths. In In­dia, there is one doc­tor for every 1,457 peo­ple as per the coun­try’s cur­rent pop­u­la­tion es­ti­mate of 1.35 bil­lion, which is lower than the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion norm of 1:1000. As per data re­leased by the Health Min­istry, un­der the Na­tional Health Pro­file, on 19 June 2018, there is one gov­ern­ment hos­pi­tal bed per 1,844 pop­u­la­tion and one state-run hos­pi­tal for every 55,591 pop­u­la­tion. To make the mat­ters grim­mer a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of these are lo­cated in met­ro­pol­i­tan and other ur­ban cen­tres.

A sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in the rate of in­fec­tions, there­fore, may also en­tail a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in the death rate. A pos­si­bil­ity dan­ger­ously close to fruition with the con­ta­gion now reach­ing the rural and tribal pop­u­la­tion. The road to achiev­ing herd im­mu­nity may be lit­tered with avoid­able deaths.