India coronavirus dispatch: Concept of 'second wave' is flawed, dangerous

Jobs are coming back, but not for the salaried, trying to reach herd immunity without a vaccine will be a disaster, and how many tests are enough tests?- how India is dealing with the pandemic

Expertspeak

Jobs are coming back, but not for the salaried: India’s unemployment rate has fallen to about 11.6 percent from a high of almost 23.5 percent in April 2020. The fall is almost as dramatic as the rise, and that throws up some questions: What is happening in the economy? Are we fundamentally more resilient than we thought? What are the other insights, particularly from the few months we lost now, for those who have been working across the country, many of them migrant labour? Read this interview with Mahesh Vyas, chief executive officer and managing director, Centre For Monitoring Indian Economy.

Managing Covid-19
 

Covid deaths the key metric, govt to track ambulance response, waiting time for bed: Beyond testing and isolation, fatality mitigation has emerged as a new focus area of the government’s Covid containment plan. To keep the fatality rate under control, there have been deliberations with states on three sub-aspects of the clinical management of patients: the time taken for patients to reach the hospital and the call refusal rate of ambulances; the average time the positive patient spends in the triage area before being assigned a bed; and the response of the hospitals in providing non-invasive oxygen to patients. Read more here. 
 

What has changed in Delhi’s plans since the Centre took charge? Patients in Delhi have faced tremendous difficulties in finding beds in public and private hospitals for Covid-19 care as the national capital saw a surge of cases. A visit to two Covid-19 dedicated hospitals in Delhi revealed that relatives were entering wards to care for patients because they were not receiving adequate care from healthcare workers. As of June 21, Delhi reported 3,000 fresh cases, taking the total count up to 59,746 cases with 2,175 deaths. Read here about the changes that have occurred since these slew of announcements. 

How many tests are enough tests? All public health decisions in an epidemic are based on the number of Covid-19 positive cases, which in turn depends on the amount of testing. Without adequate testing, we can’t realise the true scale of the epidemic, and it becomes next to impossible to predict the healthcare resources required. When faced with a pandemic like this, you don’t fly blind. Read more here. 

How Andhra is firmly testing, treating its way out of Covid crisis, but Telangana struggling: On 14 June, the KCR government allowed private labs and hospitals to test for Covid, among a host of other measures announced to tackle the spread of the infection. The move came amid widespread criticism for Telangana’s mismanagement of the Covid crisis so far — with the state testing at low levels of 1,533 per million as of 21 June. Its mortality rate is at 2.69 per cent. In the neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, however, the situation in the last three months has been vastly different. Aggressive testing and tracing, and timely treatment — the global strategy to fight Covid — has remained the backbone of Andhra’s battle. Read more here. 

Opinion

Promote people power against Covid-19: Covid-19 threatens all of society. It can be countered only through a unified society effort. It is now time to direct people power against the virus. It requires the government to be more welcoming of NGO and volunteer participation and to create a platform for a new model of PPP: People Partnered Public Health. Read more

here.

Concept of a ‘second wave’ of coronavirus is flawed and dangerous: We are not between waves. We have new cases every day. We are in an ebb and flow of Covid-19 transmission that is continually affected by our precautionary actions. Letting up on precautions will lead to an increase in cases. This is the new normal and what to expect until we have an effective vaccine with significant population uptake. Until then we have to depend on our actions to keep cases low – both now and in autumn. Read more here. 

Understanding Covid-19

Without a vaccine, trying to reach herd immunity will be a disaster: Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, use of the term “herd immunity” has spread almost as fast as the virus. But its use is fraught with misconceptions. In the United Kingdom, officials briefly considered a herd immunity strategy to protect the most vulnerable members of its population by encouraging others to become exposed and develop immunity to the virus. Others reignited the discussion by focusing on how far we are from herd immunity. But trying to reach herd immunity without a vaccine would be a disastrous pandemic response strategy. Read more here.

The medical science of Covid-19 management – a view from the bridge: India needs to set up a large, collaborative research network to confront this pandemic. Its research response has been pathetic and this is a legacy problem. To blame are ICMR and its stranglehold on biomedical  research and the collective apathy of the medical community at large. Read more here.

Podcast

Are India’s agriculture reforms likely to double farmers’ incomes? In the past few weeks, the government of India has made significant announcements on reforming agriculture, particularly the regulatory framework for managing markets across the country. The reforms have been described as path-breaking, long-term changes that will significantly alter the terms of trade in favour of the farmer. Read more here.