India’s Covid-19 war heading nowhere, time to call off the bluff

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India’s Covid-19 war heading nowhere, time to call off the bluff

The 25 days assessment suggests this strategy has miserably failed. It is said, corona virus has not yet peaked in the country

Sunday April 19, 2020 11:22 AM, Syed Ali Mujtaba, ummid.com

India Corona Virus Latest Update

India is running through the course of 40 days of lock down period, as part of its strategy to fight the Corona Virus Disease 2019 (Covid-19). But no one knows where our country is placed after this? The parable of the Blind Men and an Elephant succulently sums up India’s story of fighting the Covid war.

A quick recap: India reported its first case of Covid in Kerala on January 30, 2020. It was also the day when the World Health Organisation (WHO), for the sixth time in history, declared a "public health emergency of international concern." India declared Covid-19, a ‘Notified Disaster’ on March 13.

However it was only on March 19 that our Prime Minister wakes up to the reality and appeals to the nation for observing Janata Curfew - a day-long voluntary lock down, on March 22. The country really became serious about the Covid problem, when Prime Minister on March 24, announced for total lockdown of the country till April 14.

While making the announcement of 21 days lock down, the Prime Minister said; Mahabharata was won in 18 days; we will win the Corona war in 21 days.

Subsequently on April 14, our ‘Mukunda’ did not even frat on his earlier boast of winning the war in 21 days, when he extended the lock down for another 19 days. It appears that since March 19, the country’s leadership is grappling with ‘what to do’ syndrome and no one knows what to do!

The burning question is can we get rid of this virus and if so what is the way out? Since the beginning it is said that there are three options to get rid of the virus and there is no fourth.

One, the virus dies its natural death and frees the world from its horrendous impact. Second, a vaccination gets developed quickly and each of us gets vaccinated and get ready to work. The third is to develop the capacity to test the people and segregate them from have and have not!

The fact remains that the first two options are only day dreaming and wishful thinking which is not going to happen in the immediate future. So the only option is to quarantine people and test them for the virus of doom.

Indian leadership is too engaged in going for the third option. Since it does not have sufficient kits to test, its strategy is to push the people indoors and wait for the cases to emerge and then go for treatment. The assumption was that by lock down and social distancing method, the intensity of the corona virus could be broken.

The 25 days assessment suggests this strategy has miserably failed. It is said, corona virus has not yet peaked in the country. The country looks nowhere in sight of defeating the virus and each of us kept in complete darkness when we will overcome this crisis.

Notwithstanding the facts, it appears that even after the lock down extension the country is nowhere in the grip of the situation. It is widely believed that lock down is only a “pause button” and after that the virus will reappear.

As the virus curve continues to grow in the country the clamor is, what should be done differently? The strategy should be “chasing the virus” instead of watching the virus emergence.

The only way to pre-empting the virus attack is to put a countrywide testing architecture in place. It’s only through rapid testing of the entire country’s populace and certifying those who are healthy, quarantining those who are symptomatic and admitting those who are Covid positive, any semblance of control over the virus can be established.

It is here lays the problem because the country’s leadership has not yet put in place the resources and the paraphernalia needed to fight the virus. The country simply does not have the wherewithal or sufficient test kits to do the ‘census test.’ This is born by the fact that India doesn’t come even in the top 40 countries, which are doing something to challenge this deadly virus.

The country’s leadership is silent about its gigantic failure. No one from the top is trying to brief the people about the amount of capacity building the government is able to achieve so far. The reality is after 25 days of lock down we have been able to build the capacity to test only 199 people per 100,000. This is peanuts for the size and scale of India’s population.

India’s Covid war can only be won if we are able to get enough testing kits. Right now local supply line of kits is yet to begin and we are importing them from China. We all know to test each and every person in this country is a herculean task but then there is no shortcut to this. In this, the blame certainly goes to the government in failing in its duties.

The current leadership in order to divert the attention from these pressing problems has consciously pushing the country into the communal cauldron. People are worried more about the communal virus than the corona virus.

Meanwhile, the gimmicks of clapping and beating the vessel, lighting the candle are done by the leadership to keep the people busy that it’s trying its best to fight the Covid war.

In a cool and dispassionate analysis, India’s Covid-19 war is not heading anywhere. Indian leadership has miserably failed to tackle the corona virus. The current leadership is too arrogant to tell to the people what the magnitude of the problem is, what it is doing to tackle it and what will be the time frame in which the Covid war will get over. The current set of people really do not know how to fix up the things.

At the moment, people’s anger against this government is at its boiling point. If a referendum held now, the Parliamentary majority that this government enjoys and is the real cause of its arrogance will get a royal thrashing. It’s high time for the people of this country to call off the bluff of this government. If the people do not like to do this, then the only option left for them is to look at the sky and ask for mercy.

[Syed Ali Mujtaba is a journalist based in Chennai. He can be contacted at syedalimujtaba2007@gmail.com. Views expressed are personal]

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