Amidst re­ports of sev­eral Eu­ro­pean coun­tries hav­ing turned the cor­ner, WHO has cau­tioned against ex­u­ber­ance as the world is still in the midst of the first wave of covid19 pan­demic. His­tory of pan­demics sug­gests that they go through at least 3 waves be­fore end­ing. His­tory also sug­gests that in the sec­ond wave, the con­ta­gion is more vir­u­lent. Hence, we can lose pa­tience or un­der­es­ti­mate the killing ca­pac­ity of covid19 pan­demic only at our own peril. All coun­tries, in­clud­ing In­dia -de­vel­oped, de­vel­op­ing and un­der­de­vel­oped are at se­ri­ous risk in view of the dan­ger­ous haste be­ing demon­strated to over­look the sta­tis­tics and dy­nam­ics of COVID19 -Corona Virus Dis­ease-2019.

INDIA IS STEADILY CLIMB­ING THE CHART OF WORST AF­FECTED COUN­TRIES, with amongst the high­est daily in­crease of pos­i­tive case be­hind USA and Rus­sia.

The re­cent Delhi High Court or­der in the case of Covid19-ded­i­cated cre­ma­tion fa­cil­i­ties in Delhi and the mor­tu­ary in Lok Nayak Hos­pi­tal, Delhi, over­whelmed by dead bod­ies should serve as an eye-opener.

Novel Coro­n­avirus has some very pe­cu­liar traits which set it aside from other in­fec­tions that have af­fected pop­u­la­tions in the past of two decades. While Coro­n­avirus is not as deadly as Ebola, it is highly in­fec­tious, like com­mon flu and has a sig­nif­i­cant rate of deaths. Ergo, by the time the pan­demic ends the death toll can be quite dev­as­tat­ing.

Enough is not known about the Coro­n­avirus, which is pos­ing sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges in the ef­forts to de­velop a suc­cess­ful vac­cine. For in­stance, it af­fects mul­ti­ple or­gans and not just lungs, as it was ini­tially be­lieved. Fur­ther­more, it has post-re­cov­ery symp­toms such as Kawasaki dis­ease, es­pe­cially per­ni­cious for chil­dren. There is­n’t enough ev­i­dence gath­ered so far by med­ical doc­tors or lab­o­ra­tory re­searchers whether re­cov­ered pa­tients de­velop strong enough an­ti­bod­ies to pro­tect them from fu­ture in­fec­tions.

In­dia is cre­at­ing a false di­chotomy be­tween lock­down and open­ing up when the real is­sue is how to find the best way to open ar­eas in the coun­try and sec­tors in the econ­omy that does­n’t in­flame the con­ta­gion.

Even though there are over a hun­dred ac­tive pro­grams for de­vel­op­ing a vac­cine, yet a suc­cess­ful vac­cine is still more than a year away. Con­se­quently, even for those who are in a hurry to go to work for eco­nomic or other rea­sons, lock­down, phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing, use of masks and per­sonal hy­giene seem to be the best pro­tec­tion. Es­pe­cially so for coun­tries such as In­dia that have very lim­ited ca­pac­ity for test­ing and trac­ing.

Hasty open­ing up is bound to in­crease the rate of in­fec­tions, as has been re­ported in Brazil, USA and other coun­tries. A sim­i­lar jump is also be­ing ob­served in In­dia where the num­ber of peo­ple un­der quar­an­tine has dou­bled since open­ing up and there has been a ge­o­graph­i­cal spread of the dis­ease.

The up­shot of In­di­a’s pol­icy level sleight of hand is that poli­cies were adopted that have fed the con­ta­gion. For in­stance, al­low­ing open­ing up of even nonessen­tial ac­tiv­i­ties in the five worst-hit states. Par­tic­u­larly ex­as­per­at­ing was the arm twist­ing of states to per­mit air traf­fic.

In­dia is yet to hit the peak, and if a course cor­rec­tion is not done we are set to hit the peak in July, when floods will in­un­date a large part of the coun­try, ren­der­ing phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing and other pre­ven­tive mea­sures dif­fi­cult to ad­here to. It is rea­son­able, there­fore, to spec­u­late that the first wave of the con­ta­gion will carry till Sep­tem­ber.

Such a pro­long­ing of the first wave will be par­tic­u­larly de­bil­i­tat­ing in the ef­forts to curb the con­ta­gion as it will not only over­whelm the al­ready frag­ile med­ical ca­pac­ity but also erode it–Pro­longed wave one would ex­haust the front­line of covid19 war­riors and also in­fect them.

The fruition of this pos­si­bil­ity will be omi­nous for In­dia where the flu and pneu­mo­nia sea­son be­gins in win­ter i.e. from Oc­to­ber to Feb­ru­ary. In other words, the first wave might dove­tail into the sec­ond wave even as our med­ical fa­cil­i­ties would be fray­ing rapidly.

It is alarm­ing there­fore that in­stead of for­mu­lat­ing poli­cies counter to the cri­sis that is threat­en­ing to en­gulf us the gov­ern­ment of In­dia is still tak­ing re­course to tac­tics to de­flect pub­lic scrutiny. They are cre­at­ing a false di­chotomy be­tween lock­down and open­ing up when the real is­sue is how to find the best way to open ar­eas in the coun­try and sec­tors in the econ­omy that does­n’t in­flame the con­ta­gion.

The up­shot of this pol­icy level sleight of hand is that poli­cies were adopted that have fed the con­ta­gion. For in­stance, al­low­ing open­ing up of even nonessen­tial ac­tiv­i­ties in the five worst-hit states. Par­tic­u­larly ex­as­per­at­ing was the arm twist­ing of states to per­mit air traf­fic. Air travel is a lux­ury and it’s open­ing up could have been dis­pensed with. In­stead, air­lines were per­mit­ted to book to full ca­pac­ity in di­rect vi­o­la­tion of the norms of phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing. Is it for­tu­itous then that there are re­ports of the con­ta­gion spread­ing through the restarted air traf­fic?

In­dian pol­i­cy­mak­ers need to do a se­ri­ous re­think be­fore it is too late.

Ku­mar San­jay Singh is As­so­ci­ate Pro­fes­sor in the De­part­ment of His­tory at the Swami Shrad­dhanand Col­lege, Uni­ver­sity of Delhi with spe­cial­i­sa­tion in Mu­ta­tions in In­dian State for­ma­tion post-1947, Ex­tra­or­di­nary laws es­pe­cially In­ter­nal Se­cu­rity Leg­is­la­tions and Hu­man Rights with spe­cial fo­cus on North-east In­dia and Adi­vasi so­ci­ety.

Ti­tle Photo cour­tesy: health­line.com