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INDIA’S COVID-19 CRISIS: A NATION STRUGGLING TO BREATHE A NVE E B H UTA N I / M AG DA L E N , H U M A N S C I E N C E S
In February, it seemed like India had COVID-19 under control. Coronavirus case counts had gone down, demand for ventilators was manageable and experts predicted that the country would be spared a major second wave. Yet in April, events started to shift with the pandemic sweeping through India, causing suffering and taking lives at a horrific rate. India has suffered over 200,000 fatalities and a total of 20 million cases.
THE SOURCE: HOW DID THINGS GET HERE?
Back in early February, hospitalisation numbers had plummeted, and India was reporting about as many new cases per day as New York state, despite being 50 times as populous. The only likely explanation
India made coronavirus vaccines available to anyone over age 18 starting May 1. It is also curbing the 29
P H O T O V I A S KY
Images that have gone viral on social media show bodies heaped in makeshift crematoriums. Hospital beds and oxygen are scarce. Desperate patients and relatives have turned to the black market or crowdsourcing for medicine, while others die in hospitals amid oxygen shortages. Recent days have seen repeated record infection figures, which are likely undercounts. The death toll from the virus has surpassed 200,000, as India again reported a record number of fatalities and experts cautioned that those numbers, too, were an underestimate. But how and why did things end up this way?
was widespread immunity, epidemiologists said at the time. India is now the epicenter of the global pandemic and a focal point of international concern. Experts are starting to think that immunity in India may not have been as widespread as previously believed. Some scientists argue that earlier waves of infections primarily affected the poor, but the current surge is reaching wealthier people who had just started socializing again after staying home during the first wave. Large group gatherings may have also played a role: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been criticized for lifting virtually all restrictions and holding massive political rallies, and a religious festival that drew tens of thousands of Hindu pilgrims from all over the country has been linked to more than 100 cases. It is not yet clear if the presence of highly infectious new variants is the key factor that made India’s outbreak go from bad to worse. Scientists generally agree that it is likely that these variants played a role, but how much of a role is up for debate. However, both the UK variant and the Indian “double mutant” variant (now referred to as the Delta Variant) are driving outbreaks in Punjab and Maharashtra respectively.
