India is in the middle of general elections. Spread over seven weeks, this is the first election for the Lok Sabha post the biggest human misery recorded in history after 1918; the COVID-19 pandemic. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made several references to it, making tall claims about its ‘management’.\https://thewire.in/health/covid-second-wave-anniversary-modi-election-promise
Here is a reality-check on India’s COVID-19 crisis in five points.
A deadly second wave
The dead bodies lying on the banks of the Ganga and people queuing up outside the burial grounds for the last rites seem to have been either forgotten by the PM when he makes tall claims regarding the pandemic management, or it is a deliberate attempt to manipulate the memory of the common people.
2. The highest death toll
No wonder the second wave led to a storm that had no precedent. India had the highest death toll of the pandemic across the world. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) excessive death estimates, as many as 47 lakh people in India died till the second wave. This is equal to a little less than the entire population of Maldives.
3. First wave hangover
If the second wave was all about the absence of government, the first wave would be remembered for the long march of the migrant workers due to a lockdown that PM Modi announced while giving a window of just four hours on March 24, 2020.
4. Science took a back seat
Bhargava wrote to the principal investigators on July 3, 2020, that the vaccine should be available for public use by August 15, 2020 – a timeline that was impossible, those conducting the trial told this reporter. It was perhaps one of the most telling examples of the worst kind of science. The letter warned of consequences if the deadline was not met.
It led The Lancet, one of the oldest medical journals, to come down heavily on ICMR – India’s premier medical research agency – perhaps for the first time in history, in a scathing editorial in September 2020 titled: ‘COVID-19 in India: The Dangers of False Optimism’.
5. Solution? Worse than the problem
Two agencies of the government came out with such treatments for which the scientific rationale was hard to find. One was the Drug Controller General of India’s (DCGI) approval of certain drugs for COVID-19 use. Despite the WHO strictly advising against use of remdesivir for treatment of COVID-19 after the large scale ‘Solidarity Trials’ were completed in May 2020 showed no relevance of the drug, the DCGI approved its use a month later.
by Banjot Kaur
23/04/2024