A calm assessment of India’s pandemic response in an era of exaggerated opposites

20.500.12592/txs75w

A calm assessment of India’s pandemic response in an era of exaggerated opposites

8 Apr 2021

Covid-19 in India has caused enormous human tragedy – through the hundreds of thousands of people it killed directly and indirectly, and the suffering caused to millions of others by way of illness and disruption of normal life. After months of a low plateau with relatively few cases and deaths, the numbers started climbing up again in March across the country. India’s vaccine rollout started off slowly, focussing on frontline workers, the elderly, and other high-risk demographic categories. However, the last week saw acceleration and the seven-day rolling average of daily vaccinations is now inching towards three million, with everyone over 45 years of age now eligible to be vaccinated. Government communication on the pandemic has emphasised exceedingly on presenting comparative global statistics to claim that in terms of population percentages, India is doing much better than other large countries, and therefore, India’s pandemic response is a ‘success’. On the other hand, many analysts cite India’s overall case and death numbers to argue that the country has ‘failed’ in its pandemic response. While acknowledging that the overall numbers are not too terrifying, they contend that this is because India’s weak surveillance systems substantially undercount deaths and miss cases. The terms of discussion of the pandemic over the last year have mostly been set within a restrictive success-failure metric, which has in effect, limited the space for more nuanced, open reflection.
india healthcare public health commentaries

Authors

Oommen C. Kurian

Published in
India

Related Topics

All