Why is India having a Covid-19 surge?
As an indian, this Pandemic is an eye opener to me on the devastating impact that flawed government policies have on its citizen.<p>As the Pandemic began in India, most of the experts clearly said that all restrictions, like lockdowns, are just to slow down the spread of the disease <i>temporarily</i>, so that the healthcare infrastructure doesn&#x27;t get overburdened. It was understood that India needed to upgrade existing hospitals with more ICU beds and hospitals or build temporary shelters that could house and treat the new cases. It was understood that till everyone is vaccinated, the government needs to prepare for &quot;waves&quot; of infected people to manage the pandemic resourcefully.<p>During the first wave, we had shortages of medical equipments, like ventilators, masks, medicines and PPE kits that needed to be urgently addressed. And it was, to some extent - the government procured these on a war-footing. India had the <i>harshest</i> lockdown in the world. It devastated our economy but on the plus side really reduced the impact of the first wave. Ventilator shortage did result in many death, but this was addressed.<p>Then, after the first wave subsided, a combination of government hubris and the psychological fatigue of being in lockdown &#x2F; house arrest led to both the government and the people fooling themselves into believing the worst was over.<p>Elections were coming up in 5 states, and obviously selfish politicians want people to come to rallies and vote. So huge political rallies were allowed with restrictions (only on paper). The current right-wing power uses religious symbolism for politics, and thus also permitted the largest Hindu religious gathering - the <i>kumbh mela</i>. Again, social distancing and other restrictions were only on paper. Worse, unlike the Saudis who are only allowing vaccinated muslims to attend the religious <i>Haj</i>, there was no similar condition for the <i>kumbh mela</i> in India.<p><i>These two events - the huge political rallies and the Hindu religious gathering at the kumbh mela became super-spreader events as millions attended those.</i><p>This was one of the major policy failures of the Modi government.<p>Now, remember, the experts had pointed out that we need to use lockdowns, and lulls between waves, to upgrade our healthcare infrastructure, right? India didn&#x27;t.<p>As the second wave rose, our hospitals again became overwhelmed and just couldn&#x27;t handle the cases coming in. People were denied hospital admission and asked to wait for emergency beds till admitted patients were deemed fit to go home or died. Worse, a huge shortage of Oxygen in hospitals arose and thousands of people died due to lack of Oxygen. So people were not only being denied treatment but also died during treatment.<p>The depressing irony - <i>India is the largest producer of Oxygen and vaccine in the world!</i><p>So how did India get in to such a situation of facing shortage of both!? The reason is the complete apathy of the government in planning and preparation.<p>While we are the largest producers of Oxygen in the world, we only have 2000 trucks to transport them. Failure to plan and improve the logistics is one of the reason why many of the  hospitals are now facing Oxygen scarcity, even though we have a surplus of it! Big Hospitals weren&#x27;t also upgraded with oxygen plants.<p>Our vaccination policy also wasn&#x27;t well thought out. According to an opposition leader, we exported 60 million vaccines between January and March of this year, while we had only vaccinated around 30 to 40 million of our own people!
Our vaccine plans also hit a hurdle when a US vaccine by Novavax, that has been licensed for production in India, is facing hurdles of getting the raw material for the vaccine from US (that has obviously prioritized it for its own needs). The government also had thoughtlessly blocked other foreign vaccines from being available in India, for political gains (&quot;India is self-reliant&quot;).<p>We also exported around 1.1 million doses of Remdesivir to other countries. And our media is showing people desperate to buy Remdesivir from anywhere at any price.<p>Yes, the pandemic is a natural disaster, but the disaster that is unfolding in India is largely man-made and will be a case study in the future in all colleges on what happens when proper planning isn&#x27;t done and resources aren&#x27;t utilised properly.<p><i>Summary</i>: We had all the resources. But apathy and poor planning screwed up India&#x27;s fight against COVID.