India started witnessing a surge in covid-19 cases in March this year, it was the beginning of the second wave. Within a month, it reached 1 lakh then under 10 days the number doubled and in no time, India made a new world record by recording 314,835 new cases on April 22nd, of this year.
It took only 3 months to rise, peak and fall. In-between, Indians suffered due to the mismanagement from the side of the administration. We didn’t build enough oxygen plants or increased the capacity of hospitals in between the time we got to prepare.
Indeed, the mistake was also made from the people’s side, the carelessness shown after the fall of the first wave cannot be forgotten. People were behaving as the pandemic has ended forever. The markets were filled with people with no masks, and no social distancing. Even the supreme court had to take note of this to remind the administration to take measures for prevention.
We fell short on medicines, oxygen, and hospital beds. Who can forget the pictures of people grieving in crematoriums and outside the hospitals? We cannot forget, while all this was happening, the government took few disastrous decisions like allowing the Kumbh and the state elections. When the Kumbh started, India was reporting 1.6 lakh cases. The state elections started, Covid cases were around 60k, and when it ended, India was recording 3.8 lakhs cases. Both the events were super spreader events. It cannot be denied that the priorities of the government were not set in the right place.
The attitude of the government towards the pandemic was very concerning, it was presumed that the pandemic is over and India has seen its worst. The government was exporting vaccines to create its “Vishwa Guru” image but forgot to vaccinate its people, in the homeland. First, the vaccination drive for the 18+ started very late, plus the speed of vaccinating even the 45+ category was quite slow.
The young people were hard hit this time. The deaths in the 30–50 category were increased significantly. If more people would have been vaccinated on time, the disaster could have been prevented. All we can do is to learn from our previous mistakes and prepare for better response at the time of the third wave. It is a must for the government to vaccinate maximum people before the third wave starts.
We are still short on 600,000 doctors. The oxygen production capacity has to be increased. Taking lessons from the pandemic, India needs to make long term plans and work to improve its health infrastructure. The share in the budget for healthcare has to be increased. More medical colleges need to be opened and the infrastructure and the quality of present hospitals and medical colleges need to be upgraded.
