April 19 2021 “They told me three hours later that the baby was dead. ” A mother sitting outside the intensive care unit said blankly. At this moment, not far from the cry of another person, broke the silence. This familiar scene reappears in India a year after coronavirus hit.
Comprehensive reports, the recent outbreak in India rebounded rapidly, the number of new confirmed cases in a single day hit a record high: at present, India’s daily new cases three times the United States, the total number of cases ranked second in the world;
Why is India still suffering from an outbreak after the introduction of mass vaccinations?
Through the winter, India failed to usher in the “final stage”
In early 2021, India’s coronavirus outbreak improved, with the number of new cases falling below 10,000 in a single day.
In early March, India’s health minister, Hash Vardan, announced that the country had entered the “final stage” of a coronavirus pandemic.
Vardan’s optimism is based on a sharp drop in the number of reported infections. India’s number of new confirmed cases has fallen steadily in a single day since peaking at an average of more than 93,000 a day in mid-September 2020, the BBC reported, citing data. By mid-February 2021, there will be an average of 11,000 cases per day.
The BBC describes politicians, policymakers and parts of the media as believing since the end of 2020 that “India is really out of the woods”. In December, central bankers announced that India was “bending the infection curve” of coronavirus. In “poetic” terms, they say there is evidence that the economy is “recovering in the shadow of prolonged winter and moving towards sunny places”.
It didn’t take long, however, for things to start messing around.
India is beginning to be in the grip of a “devastating” second wave of coronavirus, and cities are facing a new blockade.
Social media was awash with videos of funerals for the dead, hospital corridors filled with the cries of relatives of coronavirus victims, ambulances lining up to transport breathless patients… People have called for help, asking for beds, medicine, oxygen and so on.
India’s Ministry of Health data show that from April 5, the first confirmed cases since the outbreak of more than 100,000 cases, to the 15th new confirmed cases soared to more than 200,000 cases, only about 10 days.
Medical resources are in a hurry! Two patients share a hospital bed . . .
The outbreak has overwhelmed India’s multi-local health-care system, with medical resources such as medical oxygen and medicines in a hurry and even two patients sharing a hospital bed.
Chief Minister Kejriwal of the Indian capital, New Delhi, said the current situation in coronavirus outbreak was “very serious and worrying”, with beds in oxygen-supply facilities nearing saturation, and the government was undergoing a major upgrade, with plans to add 6,000 coronavirus critical beds in the coming days.
In addition, india’s vaccine supply remains tight in the face of a new wave of outbreaks, despite the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer.
India’s Serum Institute said it could not increase supply until June because it did not have enough money to expand capacity. India has temporarily halted all exports of AstraZeneca vaccines because of the country’s urgent need for the vaccine and allowed the import of foreign vaccines.
A senior Indian health official said the next four weeks would be “very, very critical” for India to fight the outbreak.
The “parallel world” that fuels the waves
Yet in a “parallel” world in India, people seem to be far from death and despair.
Since the end of March, India has held a series of local elections, holiday celebrations, religious gatherings and other large-scale gathering activities, contributing to the spread of the pandemic.
Local council elections in West Bengal, Assam and the Central Territory have kicked off, with numerous campaigns, with senior officials, including Prime Minister Narebol Modi and Interior Minister Amit Shah, attending the rally, which brought together large numbers of masked people.
Following the traditional Hindu festival of Sprinkle, India has welcomed what it calls the world’s largest religious gathering, the Big Pot Festival. The festival, which lasts several weeks a year, attracts tens of millions of Hindus.
In places such as Hridwal, North Akhendor, large numbers of people gathered on the banks of the Ganges River to pray and bathe in the water, with millions of people gathering at the same time at rush hour, crowded and many without masks posing a huge public health risk.
In the five days from April 10 to 14, medical staff tested positive for nucleic acid in 236,751 people in India for the “Big Pot Festival” celebrations, confirming fears that the religious gathering could exacerbate the spread of the virus. What is even more frightening, however, is that the actual number of infections may be higher as some of the test results have not yet been released.
“What is happening is beyond reality, ” says Shiv Viswanathan, a sociology professor. Experts say the government appears to have completely ignored a second wave of infections that could hit India.
Relax vigilance, virus variation… There are many obstacles to curbing the spread of the pandemic
The BBC points out that the second wave of new outbreaks in India is due to people relaxing their guard, attending weddings and social gatherings, and the government’s mixed message of allowing political and religious gatherings.
In addition, people rarely wear masks in public places, which is a major obstacle to curbing the widespread spread of the virus.
Gautam Menon, a professor of physics and biology, said a second outbreak was inevitable, but India could have “delayed it and mitigated its impact.”
Mr Menon said India, like many other countries, should have started careful genome monitoring in January. “In February, we learned of the new variant from reports in Maharashtra. Authorities initially denied the claim. Menon added, “This is an important turning point.”
At present, there are many variants of the new coronavirus transmission in India. In addition to the mutated virus first found in the UK, Brazil, South Africa and other countries into India, the researchers also found a new variant of the virus from samples taken in Maharashtra, which carries mutations in E484Q and L452R, which can lead to immune flight and increased infectiousness. Between January and March 2021, the mutated virus was present in 221 of the 361 serum samples tested in the state.
Guerrelia, director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, said recently that the recent outbreak in the capital, New Delhi, may be related to the spread of the mutated virus. Some mutated viruses are more contagious, and at the peak of the last outbreak, a patient may have infected 30 to 40 percent of close contacts, and surveillance data from this wave of outbreaks suggest that one patient may be infected with 80 to 90 percent of the close contacts.
Will India once again face a full blockade? 】
Although more than 700 million people in India have been subject to severe restrictions on population movements such as blockades and curfews over the past two days over the past two days, accounting for about 57 percent of the total population, the hard-hit areas will have to be completely sealed off again if new cases do not show a downward trend, the analysis said.
Singapore’s Union Morning Post points out that when the number of new coronavirus infections in India rose sharply in March 2020, Prime Minister Naremon Modi announced a nationwide blockade that would begin at midnight on March 24th, shutting down all modes of transport and causing millions of migrants to walk home from the city.
Now, however, if India renews its national blockade, it could trigger a humanitarian crisis, and the loss of livelihoods for migrant workers, whose return could also increase the risk of spreading the virus and further expand the affected areas.
The BBC says people should learn to adapt to short-term local blockades in case of an inevitable spike in infections in the future. Given that India is clearly a long way from achieving “mass immunization” and that vaccination rates remain low, most epidemiologists predict a more severe outbreak in the country.
“If we can’t keep our distance in a crowded city, we can at least make sure everyone wears the right mask,” the experts said. This is not a very high requirement.
