Vaccinating India– the responsibility shifts to the states

The tragedy around COVID continues relentlessly. Daily numbers have crossed 3.5 lakh infections and nearly 3000 people dead. India now has one in 7 active cases worldwide, contributing to nearly 15% of the disease burden. The bad news is that these numbers are on the rise and are estimated to keep going up for at least two weeks, if not longer. Karnataka has announced a lockdown, while most cities are under night curfew in any case. Hospitals are stretched beyond capacity and unable to handle this rush, particularly in Delhi and in UP.

The only silver lining comes from Mumbai, where the daily case load has been declining for a few days now. Orissa, Kashmir, Assam and Himachal are not seeing huge increases. However, in the rest of the country the news is grim. What is scary is the prospect of our rural areas getting infected and that is what seems to be happening across the country now. There are no hospitals, leave alone ICUs and ventilators for rural patients and they are in a precarious situation without access to even testing facilities.

To compound these problems are the stories that are coming from departments and officials deliberately asking diagnostic labs not to give reports that declare patients as positive. Also, of death data being fudged and the mismatch between bodies that are being buried and cremated versus the daily death figure being given out by governments. By now, unfortunately our data has lost so much credibility that there are various estimates that are being given out, which suggest that the actual figure of infections and deaths could be more than 3 to 10 times the official figures

The first thing for state governments to do is to realize that data cannot be fudged forever. If death numbers are not given out, people will see overcrowding in shamshaans and graveyards now know that there is something wrong. This spreads far more anxiety among people than the actual facts. States like Maharashtra and Kerala have adopted the strategy of giving real time data on their portals and that is one reason their numbers are being respected. Also, the true extent of the problem enables both the public and private sector healthcare workers to be prepared for the load that they could get and should be prepared for any emergency.

The second is to ensure that there is more than adequate stock of essentials like Oxygen. It is such a shame that India should now be running out of Oxygen and having patients being cleared out of hospitals as they have no supply. When the infamous incident happened in Gorakhpur in 2017 where young children died because of oxygen supplies running out at a government hospital, the whole world was aghast and we thought this would never happen again. It is now the same scene across the country that we are witnessing while the international community watches in despair at horror stories emerging from Delhi, with its world class infrastructure, struggling to keep its hospitals open.

Read more: https://www.siasat.com/vaccinating-india-the-responsibility-shifts-to-the-states-2129327/