Cabinet reshuffle: Harsh Vardhan fails to clear test ahead of third wave

Around noon on Wednesday, then Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan had sent out a message on his Twitter handle that ‘test, track and treat’ was being effectively implemented while pointing out that more than 1.9 million Covid19 tests had been conducted a day before and a total of over 423 million so far. He had tagged PMO (Prime Minister’s Office) on that tweet. A few hours later, Vardhan, who’s been at the centre of the Covid battle as health minister, retweeted the live oath-taking ceremony for the new ministers. He was out of the Cabinet by then. He did not clear the performance assessment done by Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of a possible third wave of Covid-19, people in the know said.       

             

India’s management of the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic drew all-round criticism both within the country and outside. The Covid toll in India is at more than 400,000, making it the third largest death number after the US and Brazil. In vaccination too, the progress has been slow and short of targets.   

The misplaced euphoria in March of having beaten the virus, the shortage of essential medicines, life saving medical oxygen and hospital beds, as well as policy flip-flops around the universal Covid-19 vaccination programme have all come up for hard criticism.

Images of overflowing mortuaries, queues for ambulance, gasping patients waiting outside hospitals, helpless orphaned children, black-market prices of Covid-19 drugs like remdesivir, and social media posts highlighting these may have prompted the government to change the health minister, according to an official. Politicians including Vardhan, a medical doctor himself, had declared ‘’endgame” of the Covid-19 pandemic in March. At that point, the number of cases had come down to around 11,000 from a peak of 93,000 in September. The deadly second wave was waiting to hit India.

In an interview to Karan Thapar in May, public health expert Ashish Jha said one could see by late February, the infection numbers had started to rise. Jha pointed at the government’s failure to respond urgently and not until far along in April when it was clear by mid-March that the country was heading for a second wave.

Although the country did not have enough jabs for its people, the government continued with vaccine diplomacy. Around 66 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines were sent out of the country from January to March either as grant or commercial export.

At the same time, the Centre kept changing its own vaccination policy. Production and availability of vaccines could not keep pace with the demand that was suddenly created, more so as the country was going through a ravaging second wave. Subsequently, exports were barred.

According to ourworldindata.org, as of July 6, India has managed to cover only 4.75 per cent of its population with two vaccine shots as against 49.9 per cent in the UK and 47.1 per cent in the US.

Analysts believe the political leadership is trying to press a refresh button, and Vardhan stepping down is a step in that direction.