India’s Fight Against COVID-19

In recent history, most nations have deviated from basic needs and priorities. Everyone wants to be a global player but no one wants to be a global leader.

The COVID-19 pandemic is an eye-opener for all nations. COVID-19 is an infectious disease caused by a novel coronavirus. This virus really brought almost all countries around the world to the ground. Birds are flying freely, animals are walking freely, but billions of people are locked in homes worldwide. Since its outbreak in Wuhan in December 2019, millions of people have been affected globally. COVID-19 is a respiratory illness spread through contact with infected people or an object that has the virus.

The Indian government, without waiting for any announcement from the World Health Organization (WHO) or any other international agency, announced the countrywide lockdown on March 24, 2020. The nationwide lockdown has enormous effect on the Indian economy. Agriculture, the rural economy, small traders and daily wage earners are the worst affected by the lockdown. The lockdown is from top to bottom – from state, city, district, taluka to village level.

The complete lockdown is a bitter pill but it is needed in this situation to save each and every life, irrespective of economic loss. It is a critical question between life and livelihood. The Indian government has taken a series of measures to contain the spread of COVID-19. It quickly closed down all educational institutions, and suspended all public programs, academic events like seminars, public talks, and conferences. It suspended all religious gatherings, functions, including marriage ceremonies, and all kinds of celebrations. It also closed all markets, suspended local, national and international transport to break the contagious chain of COVID-19, and asked all concerned authorities to make sure that everything is observed. India had never experienced this kind of lockdown in the past century.

In the process of breaking the COVID-19 infection chain, the Indian government has tried hard to keep the essential commodity supply chain intact. Since the lockdown, till this date, the government has been able to prevent the pandemic from going from stage two to stage three; that is, community spreading. But there is a slow increase of confirmed cases as compared to other countries. The government has also created dedicated hospitals for COVID-19 patients, quarantined infected people, promoted sealing off of certain hot spots, conducted screening and testing of people coming from abroad, and spread awareness about social distancing. State governments have taken steps according to the guidelines of the central government, and built temporary hospitals on open ground if the number of the infected goes high.

There is a continuous increase in the number of positive cases, though it is through addition, not multiplication. According to the government of India, as of April 15 this year, there were 9,756 active cases, 1,305 cured/discharged cases and 377 deaths. To fight against the pandemic, the Indian Health Ministry has increased testing labs from only one in the initial stage to 146 state-run labs and 67 private ones. These labs have capacity to do 16,000 tests daily. The total number of tests done stood at 150,000 as of April 10. Yet, there is no vaccine available for COVID-19, so at the beginning some treatments for diseases like SAARC and HIV are said to be tested on critical patients. But these treatments did not give the expected results. To some extent, hydroxychloroquine which is used to treat Malaria, is working effectively on COVID-19. Therefore, its demand is increasing worldwide. At a press conference held on April 10 by the Indian Health Ministry along with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Lav Agrawal, joint secretary of the Indian Health Ministry, said that the total requirement of hydroxychloroquine tablets for the next one week was 10 million, and at present India had 30.5 million tablets.

Despite all these efforts by the Indian government, there is a lot more to do on public health. Apart from the progress in medical science, communicable diseases continue to remain a major public health challenge to the world in general and India in particular. Dissemination of public health awareness to maintain social distancing, particularly in such situations, has become a big challenge to the government. It is because of poor functional literacy and low educational status in the country. In India, many public hospitals lack infrastructure, funds and political will. Community and primary health centers across the country, too, face the same problems. According to the WHO, India spends 3.5 percent of its GDP on healthcare, and currently the size of India’s GDP is US$2.8 trillion with over 1.3 billion population. It means that India spends only US$241 every year per individual. In 2017, there were 156,231 sub-centers, 25,650 primary health centers and 5,624 community health centers functioning in India. The physician to population ratio in India is 0.8 doctors per 1,000 people, falling below the WHO standard of one doctor per 1,000 people. Hence, doctors and nurses are under huge pressure in this situation. The frontline health workers dealing with COVID-19 patients are unable to see their small children due to the possible transmission of COVID-19. India is fighting COVID-19 on its own with available resources.

Therefore, policymakers in India need to pay more attention to public health. A healthy nation should be recognized on the basis of the health of its people. It seems that the government is always thinking of gradual withdrawal from all public sectors. But in the long run this approach is very dangerous. A welfare state should not withdraw from any public sector. To strike a balance between private and public sectors, the presence of government is necessary. Otherwise, the day will not be far off when the government will be elected by corporations for the sake of corporations instead of by the people for the people. After all, for whom has the state come into existence? If the government always thinks in terms of loss and profit, then it also has to think of the loss caused due to the current pandemic. Had the government spent only five percent of its money, that we lost due to lockdown, on health and education, both the systems would have been the finest in the world. On the one hand the government talks about medical tourism in India to give good facilities to foreign people, at the same time we are depriving our own people by giving poor health facilities and education.

Moreover, India and China can work together to develop a vaccine for COVID-19. China has already discovered the genetic sequence of the virus, so it is a good opportunity for scientists in both countries to work on vaccines. This situation reminded me of Dr. Dwarkanath Kotnis, who was a member of an Indian medical team to assist Chinese people in 1939, in Yan’an and later in northern China. He earned high respect from the Chinese government and people. In order to cherish his memories, the Chinese government, in 1976, built the Memorial Hall of Dr. Kotnis in Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province. The present situation is also a kind of war against COVID-19 and both countries can fight together to save humanity.

After the outbreak of COVID-19 in China, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote a letter in February 2020 and expressed his condolences to the people of China who lost their lives due to the pandemic and offered India’s assistance to China to tackle the challenge. Soon after, the Chinese Foreign Ministry thanked New Delhi’s goodwill gesture. “We thank and appreciate India’s support for China’s fight against the novel coronavirus pneumonia. India’s acts of goodwill fully demonstrate its friendship with China,” said Geng Shuang, spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

In India, Tang Guocai, Consul General of China in Mumbai, said that Indian businessmen like Mukesh Ambani and others wrote a letter to China and expressed solidarity. Similarly, Chinese business leaders like Fosun and Jack Ma Foundation have donated medical materials to the Mumbai Municipal Corporation. Further, he said, Shanghai is the sister city of Mumbai and eager to contribute to Mumbai and Maharashtra through the exchange of videos among experts and donation of medical equipment. Such interaction between the local governments and people-to-people exchange will boost China-India cooperation in this difficult time, added Tang.

Both countries need to learn a lesson from European countries and the way they are suffering, though they have world-class health systems. The existing health system of India needs to be upgraded with adequate equipment, staff and funds. The government expenditure on health must be scaled up from the existing 3.5 percent to at least 5 percent of the country’s GDP. There is always a high risk of spreading the virus in overcrowded areas. So, India needs to be ready in the future for such crisis management. Who knows in the future what sort of virus will emerge and in which part of the world, maybe even in India. Since all countries are integrated in one way or another, we cannot prevent such a virus from coming to our country. Are we going to lock down again and again? It’s only a good health care system and education that will save us. Money can be earned again but once a life is lost it can never be brought back. And so, it is said that “health is wealth.”

The author is an assistant professor in the Department of Civics and Politics, University of Mumbai, India.