Coronavirus Part 28, Data On Second Wave, Philosophy Behind the Suffering

 

                    It has been a tough week and month for the country as far as covid-19 is concerned. This week saw covid cases touching 4 lakh per day and this month saw the cases exponentially rise to reach this far. On April 1^st, the cases are around 80 thousand and by April 30^th it increased 5 times to reach around 3 lakh 90 thousand. This 5 fold growth in the cases at this large numbers is an extremely worrying sign. They are calling it as a second wave. But even the first waveis also not this dangerous. The first wave never touched 1 lakh cases per day. But here we are talking about 4 lakh and sustaining at this level for many days. This April is the deadliest month of corona for India since its entry to the country.

                    I just tried to do some number crunching against the historical data to find any sense in this high numbers. Nothing can be made out of this high spike in the last one month. The country has been opening up slowly and everything is improving. Unexpectedly and out of nowhere, the virus has unleashed its full prowess on the country in the past few weeks. When the country is similarly exposed in the last 7 months, there is not much presence of this virus. But what can explain the behaviour of this mutating virus to wreak havoc on the country in the hot Summer month of April. The total infected from inception are 1.9 crore and among that 0.8 crore are infected in the April surge alone.

                    Around 40% of total cases are registered in one month and the fragile health system is put under severe stress because of this spike. When lakhs and lakhs of people are getting infected each single day, how can we handle them and recover them. India has 0.5 hospital beds per thousand people; it is not even 1. Going by the conservative estimates and assuming 10% of the infected people require hospitalisation, it still came up to 8 lakh patients in a single month. But the beds available in the country are only 6.9 or 7 lakh – numerically increasing the 1 bed per 2000 citizens comes to 6.9 lakh per 1.38 billion people. This severe shortage adds up to the disproportionate spread of the virus in some states which increases the gap.

                    8 lakh patients pitted against 7 lakh beds. The outcome of this is Delhi crumbled, Mumbai crumbled, Ahmedabad crumbled and many places crumbled with SOS messages emanating from every nook and corner of the country asking for bed, oxygen etc. If 15% of the cases require hospitalisation, then the count shoots up to 12 lakh patients on a busy day. This will increase the struggle of the critical patients and make them less prone to recovery. One of the silver linings of covid-19 in India is the extremely low fatal rate of around 1%. But if 100% is 4 lakh, 1% still turns out to be 4 thousand which is a high number. This will vary depending on people getting enough beds, oxygen, medication etc. Compounding the problem of high cases, there are no enough beds, enough oxygen, enough injections to cure, enough vaccinations which all came to haunt the common man suffering from the virus.

                    The lessons learnt from this pandemic are -  India needs to increase the health care capacity by 7 to 8 times of the current levels to be able to fight the ill-health of its citizens. It will reduce the strain on doctors, nurses and other front line warriors since a large pool will be available with multi fold increase in capacity. What is more shameful than putting doctors on the edge where more than 750 doctors died of covid-19 in the country. If we cannot save our doctors how can we save our patients. Along with increasing the hospitals, we need to increase the count of front line warriors like doctors, nurses tremendously. The present day budget allocated to health care is very meagre and insufficient. This has to be raised as well to give peaceful lives to doctors and patients. Our motto should be simple – no future doctor should go through the pain which is gone through by the doctors these days. The death of these 750 doctors should not go in vain without creating excellent health infrastructure across the country. No future doctor should put his life at risk in line of duty. Let the doctors enjoy the comfort and let the patients enjoy the vast choice of getting treated.

                    Who owns up this pandemic second wave is an important question. As I already stated, India is gradually opening up and no one could imagine a catastrophe of this magnitude will fall upon us. The experts can’t predict, the government can’t foresee it, the front line warriors can’t handle it. The government did everything within its capacity since the last year to thwart off the danger. The lockdown is a master stroke and first of its kind in the world. It slowed down the viral transmission for a year. We are all safe for a year due to the lockdown at the right time. Its absence is what is hurting the most in the second wave. But the micro-containment zone is another great strategy of the second wave without the need for a complete lockdown. India distributed a record number of vaccines to the world countries under the tag of ‘Vaccine Friendship’. India inoculated a record number of its citizens since the start of largest vaccination drive. We hit majority of the nodes right since the beginning of the pandemic and will continue to heal and help together. One bad month due to the unexpected virus doesn’t put anything on the back seat. Let us brace up for a bigger spike in the month of May and let us emerge victorious with very minimal damage.

                    The pandemic cannot be felt until it reaches you. It has reached me and my own family members are suffering because of it. Likewise, lakhs of families are going through turbulent times. We need to understand that this microscopic viral pandemic is used by the god to balance the ecosystem and make some corrections. We need to take it in the stride that our own family members have become tools in this exercise to make corrective actions. Our own family members are suffering for the great future of humanity. Their suffering will not go in vain which will only create a better tomorrow. All those who left to the heavenly abode have become seeds to give rise to a bountiful harvest. Let us all be fearless in waging the war against the pandemic which will raise our immunity and defeat the virus. Finally, once again let us strongly believe that the curse of the pandemic is going to do a lot of good for the humanity.