Resurgence of COVID-19 in India: A Tale of Six Unlearnt Lessons
Resurgence of COVID-19 in India: A Tale of Six Unlearnt Lessons
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Resurgence of COVID-19 in India: A Tale of Six Unlearnt Lessons

April 9, 2021

With more than one lakh new coronavirus infections a day, India occupied the number one spot in the world earlier this week. The number is higher than the previous peak reached in mid-September 2020. The relief in the country due to the declining number of cases since September 2020 has given way to deepening concern at the current rapid rise.

Partial lockdowns are being reluctantly imposed again and if the situation worsens, full lockdown cannot be ruled out.

Experts are groping for answers as to why the cases fell drastically after mid-September 2020 and why they have rapidly gone up now since mid-February, in spite of the ongoing vaccination drive. What are the lessons for policymakers?

Disease little understood even now

Two things are now clear. First, we do not understand enough about this virus and second that we cannot let our guard down as yet, even if the number of infections decline and vaccination proceeds apace. Many European nations have had to implement lockdowns in spite of vaccination proceeding apace. The situation in Brazil has turned dire with the number of cases and deaths rising to record levels. UK and US have been vaccinating their citizens rapidly and are now relaxing the restrictions imposed earlier, in phases. Employment in the US has witnessed a rebound.

The Indian economy has seen a slow and steady revival after unlocking measures were implemented from June 2020 onward. A rebound occurred after September 2020 with the start of the festive season which luckily coincided with the decline in the number of infections. Now that the number of cases is surging and restrictions are being imposed on activity, the fear is that economic recovery will slow down or even reverse? Nothing can be said with certainty since not enough is known about the virus and the course of the disease in coming months. Models suggest that our medical systems may get overwhelmed in some areas and consequently the number of deaths may rise. If that happens, lockdowns may become more intense, even if locally and not nationally. That would impact both demand and supply and slow down the economy.
The current wave of the disease is different from the earlier one in that a) it is impacting more younger people, b) more of the better-off sections and c) more cases are being reported from smaller towns that do not have a robust medical infrastructure.

Since younger people are less prone to severe disease, the number of deaths will be less. Further, the disease is much better understood now and protocols have been established, lowering death rates in all countries. But this can change as the disease spreads to the smaller towns and villages in India and the deaths there spike due to weaker health infrastructure. However, it is possible that many of these deaths may not get reported so that the reported numbers may not rise dramatically.

Luck or mutating virus

Luck has favoured India since mid-September 2020 since cases declined in spite of three big adverse circumstances. First, the start of the festive season and people moving around and mixing freely. Second, the intensification of the farmers’ protests where there was minimal physical distancing or use of masks. Lastly, the Bihar elections led to the throwing to the winds all precautions. So, either India had done something right or luck was favouring us.

India was plain lucky that the cases came down in spite of all the adverse events. India’s caseload did not rise during the peak cold season of December and January, as has been the case in many other countries. Like in 2020, cases in India are rising when the cold season is over. None of the other factors – a younger population, BCG vaccination taken by most, higher immunity due to living in more unhygienic conditions, elections, protests, etc. – have changed between September 2020 and February 2021.

Police officers patrol at the empty Gateway of India monument, amidst the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Mumbai, India, April 5, 2021. Photo: Reuters/Niharika Kulkarni/File Photo

The only difference is the mutating virus, and humankind has no control over that. Many new variants have evolved and will keep evolving. The more virulent S. African, Brazilian and the Kent variety from the UK are a threat since these have also spread in India but we do not know how much because we do little genome testing of the virus. Even the UK which does the maximum amount of genome testing discovered the Kent variety a couple of months after it started circulating in September 2020.

Unlearnt lessons

Scientists have recently flagged the emergence of a double mutant strain in India. But it is not known how much has it spread or whether it is the UK variant that is proliferating rapidly in the country? So, the first lesson is India needed to step up genome testing rapidly but since the disease was in decline it fooled us into complacency. We also needed to not only continue testing and tracing but increase our capacity for it. So, the second lesson is that we relaxed when we should not have. After all, even at the lowest point in mid-February, there were around 10,000 new cases a day.

Past experience has been that there is invariably a second wave of the virus which has been more virulent. It should have cautioned us to not lower our guard and to continue to build our health infrastructure and research capability. We are also likely to face a shortage of medical personnel as the disease spreads further. In addition to normal health requirements, we need manpower for vaccinating, testing, tracing and hospitalisation all at once. These requirements should have been anticipated and that is the third lesson.

Due to the lowering of the guard, many people believe that there is nothing like COVID and it is only a conspiracy by vested interests. This feeling is reinforced if leaders address mass election rallies all over the country and the Maha Kumbh is allowed to go on as usual. The attention of leadership is diverted to matters other than fighting the disease. The lackadaisical attitude of the leadership added further to `vaccine hesitancy. So, many have not come forward to get vaccinated, thereby derailing the vaccination programme. The fourth lesson then is that leadership has to be focused and gain the confidence of the public.

In the first phase till February end, the frontline workers were to get their jab but many did not show up. In the second phase, 300 million of the most vulnerable were to be vaccinated by July 21. That programme has been cut short even though barely a total of 55 million have had at least one dose by April 1. This is not even 4% of the population. Now the demand is to allow anyone willing to be vaccinated to get the job. But this has the potential of a free for all, crowding and shortage of vaccines and of medical personnel.

We knew since July 2020 that vaccination would be required on a massive scale. To get to herd immunity in one year, 60% would have to be vaccinated, which is around 150 million a month. We needed to prepare to produce vaccines at this rate, have the logistics ready and tackle vaccine hesitancy through creating better public awareness. The policymakers rather than constantly saying how well they have tackled the economy and the disease should have been cautioning the public and gaining their trust. The fifth lesson then is better planning and realism.

Another lockdown?

Finally, at this stage what should state governments do? We are far from herd immunity so the chain of transmission cannot be broken without massive testing, contact tracing and isolation of the infected. Given over a lakh of new infections a day and the number of active cases above 5 lakh, this is going to be a difficult task. Further, due to the lack of precautions early on, people carrying the disease have spread all over the country and tracking them is going to be difficult. Many workers have been returning to their villages anticipating another lockdown and they will certainly be carriers of the virus.
We have known that because of our low testing, the number of infected maybe 10 to 12 times more than the number of cases detected. So, the task of contact tracing will be humongous. All this indicates that we cannot predict when we will reach the second peak and when the number of cases will start to decline. So, are we again staring at a painful lockdown like in Italy or France? It could be a short one but may become necessary – businesses will oppose it and workers would suffer. Advance planning is required for dealing with distress.

States are going for sealing buildings and areas as containment zones, stopping contact services like shops and malls, night curfew and weekend lockdown. Are these useful given that during the day people will continue to mix? So, the sixth lesson is to anticipate when to go for lockdown and not delay it if it is required.

In brief, the coronavirus situation has abruptly and rapidly changed since mid-February. We should have used our better luck since September 2020 to prepare for the worst but complacency set in and we are now paying for it. The workers and small businesses will again be the hardest hit due to partial lockdowns and closures. We forgot that even at its lowest in mid-February the number of new cases was high, we knew of the emergence of new variants in other countries and we should have anticipated that that could also happen in India at any time. Let us hope that the number of deaths do not rise rapidly. What the six lessons point to is that the policymakers `chalta hai’ attitude leads to firefighting rather than planning ahead even during a deep crisis. (THE WIRE)

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Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir police’s decision to pursue legal action against scribes and photographers who come close to gunbattle sites or near scenes of clashes between forces and protesters has created a flutter in the press fraternity in Kashmir, with media bodies terming the latest decree as a “tactic to coerce journalists into not reporting facts on the ground”. Media freedom has been frequently subject to restrictions in Kashmir and journalists often find themselves summoned to police stations, booked under FIRs and manhandled by the forces. On Tuesday, Vijay Kumar, Kashmir’s inspector general of police, warned journalists against covering operations at gun-fire sites in the real-time and printing content that “promotes anti-national sentiment”. “The media persons should do not carry any live coverage of any encounter or law and order situation,” a local wire service quoted him saying. “The freedom of speech and expression is subject to reasonable restrictions that should not violate other person’s right to life guaranteed under Article 21 or putting the national security in jeopardy.” On Wednesday evening, Kumar said he has issued written directions to all district Senior Superintendents of Police (SSPs) to take legal action “based on facts” against media professionals who come close to gunbattle sites or near scenes of “law and order” situations. “I have already issued written directions to all districts SSPs yesterday. District SSPs will take legal action on facts,” Kumar told a wire agency on Wednesday, adding that directions applied to both national as well as for local media outlets. Kumar did not entertain calls from The Wire to confirm the reports. However, another SSP-level officer said that there was no order on this front and IG police “has just quoted Hon’ble Supreme court order and Cable TV Act”. He did not specify which apex court order was cited. Also read: Despite Reporting With ‘Utmost Honesty’, Threat of Arrest Looms Over Kashmiri Journalist The latest announcements have triggered a wave of apprehensions among Kashmiri photojournalists, who said they were unsure how security forces are going to react the next time they approach an encounter site. “Already, police stops us at the peripheral cordon when the encounter is going on,” said Waseem Nabi, a Kashmiri photojournalist. “Only after the gunbattles end do we swarm to the site of operation. In this light, it is really confusing what the directions want to convey.” The announcements also follow a cordon and search operation at Gulab Bagh area at the outskirts of Srinagar city on Wednesday. The 17-hour-long search operation during which forces claimed they fired warning shots to elicit a retaliatory fire from militants, ended without any exchange with reports claiming that militants may have escaped. When journalists reached the site the next day, they discovered a white-coloured building riddled with what appeared to be marks from heavy ammunition rounds. The interior of the building was also damaged significantly. Journalists in Kashmir have often found themselves at the receiving end of police action when anti-militant operations are underway. There are instances of journalists suffering violence at the hands of security forces during stone-pelting clashes and protests. Last week, a police constable was filmed kicking Qisar Mir, a Kashmiri photojournalist, near a gunfight site in Pulwama in South Kashmir. Similarly, Saqib Majeed and Shafat Farooq, two photojournalists covering clashes outside Jamia Masjid in Srinagar, claimed they were manhandled by policemen last month. Farooq, who said cops hit him with the rear end of a rifle, was later hospitalised. Kashmiri journalists are befuddled by the choice of words used by the police. “They say we are covering live encounters when actually we have never done that,” said Syed Shahriyar, a multimedia journalist who has been published by VICE news, BBC, Independent and Al Jazeera. “We only rush to gunfight site when forces withdraw. By placing restrictions on that, maybe the police is trying to convey that we mustn’t cover these events at all.” Coverage of gunfight sites has been an emotive issue for security agencies in Kashmir. The reports of destruction of residential or commercial structures where militants take shelter have become a source of simmering anger among the civilian population. During the last week’s encounter at Kakapora in Pulwama, video clips showing forces blowing up a house using improvised explosive devices went viral on the internet and elicited a resentful response from Kashmiri social media users. Also read: Srinagar: Journalists Allege Manhandling by Police Amidst Clashes at Jamia Masjid Last month too, six houses were razed to rubble during a gunfight at Rawalpora village in Shopian. Through media interviews with the locals, it came to light that villagers were allegedly told by the army to spray their houses with combustible liquid and set fire to them. The army later issued a statement refuting such charges. Last year, during a similar fire-exchange in Nawa Kadal area of Srinagar city, dozens of houses were destroyed. The editor of the news website that reported the extent of the destruction was later summoned by the police over his publication’s coverage. In Kashmir, media bodies have said they feel anguished at the police’s decision to place further restrictions on covering gunfight scenes. “If this is a part of the official policy of police then it appears to be a tactic to coerce journalists into not reporting facts on the ground,” a statement from 11 Kashmir-based media conglomerations said. “It also seems to be a part of the string of measures taken by the authorities to suppress freedom of press in the region.” The statement said that the media in Kashmir are aware of the journalistic guidelines and ethics they must demonstrate during gunfights and law and order situations, and that they have always upheld these principles. “Covering and reporting law and order situations in the region is one of the basic requirements for most news organisations and hence an essential part of the professional role of media professionals. Barring them from covering such events would mean stopping them from delivering their professional duties,” it said. “Press freedom is the cornerstone of a democracy and any attack on it undermines the democratic setup of which media is the fourth pillar. Any such attack on press freedom and journalism is highly distressful.”
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Kashmir Journalists Confused, Worried by Police Warning Against Covering Gunbattles

On December 15, 2019, when details of the Delhi police’s brutal attack on the students of Jamia Millia Islamia started coming in, the first thing I was reminded of was an incident of police brutality on Jamia students from April 2000. On the night of April 9 that year, the Delhi Police had brutally assaulted, arrested and abused more than a hundred students, including minors. There were several reasons why the April 2000 attack came to my mind when I got to know the details of the December 2019 attack on the students. The first was the similarities between the two. Secondly, that was the year I had arrived in Jamia for the first time from my hometown in Bihar to appear in the entrance test for Class XI. Though I had arrived nearly three months after the incident, it was still afresh in the memories of the students and they were yet to recover from the mental and physical trauma. I remember seeing posters and wall writings demanding justice in different parts of the campus. Students raising their hands leave Jamia Milia University following the police’s attack on the campus on December 15, 2019. Photo: Reuters From seniors who were victims of the attack, I heard horrific stories of the attack. I was told students were thrown out of the balcony of the third floor of the Shafiqur Rehman Kidwai (SRK) hostel, where some students from my home district (Supaul) were staying. According a fact-finding report by the People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR), it was perhaps one of the worst ever incidents of police terror against students since the Emergency. As per another fact-finding report, the police had came to the university library on April 9, 2000, to pick up two students. In protest, the students blocked the road. The police called reinforcements and resorted to lathi-charge on the students. Meanwhile, the provost intervened and persuaded the students to go back to their hostels. However, “once the students reached the hostel, all of a sudden the police attacked them and unleashed the trail of terror with full vengeance.” Even the school students – studying for their exams in the Central Library were not spared. The fact finding teams which visited the university noted in their reports that the attack was so brutal that even after policemen were deployed to clear up any signs of the attack on the morning of April 10 and bloodstains were washed off, when they visited the campus, the SRK hostel (where much of the attack was focussed) was “in shambles with glaring evidence of destruction.” Bloodstains were visible to a fact-finding team in rooms, corridors and staircases, five days after the attack. At the time of the attack, several students were in the mosque of one of the hostels. “I was called a criminal and an ISI agent by the policemen,” a student recalled. “The police officers started beating me brutally and pulled me out of the mosque. In the process, I was also assaulted with rifle butts, due to which my leg was broken and I was writhing in pain. Then I was stuffed into the police Gypsy car and taken to AIIMS. On the way, I was continuously beaten and my beard was pulled,” he wrote in his complaint to the National Human Rights Commission. The PUDR report states that many of the injured students spent the night in the hospital and were brought back to the police station the next morning. It is only then they discovered that they had been victims of a cruel trick as “all those who had got medical attention, and for whom Medico-Legal cases had to be registered, were charged with a number of offences including section 307 of IPC (attempt to murder).” Thereafter, 66 of them were produced in the Patiala house court. When they were presented before the magistrate in the evening, he reportedly enquired the students, “Kisi ko kuch kehna hai (Anyone wants to say something)?” To which some of them said, “Sir, imtehan (exams) hain…” But instead of releasing the students, the judge sent them to the Tihar jail. An acquaintance of mine, one of the students who was beaten and sent to jail, recently told me, “It was the worst night of my life.” He was then a student of BA final and his exams were going on. “I nearly missed my exam since I was sent to Tihar. I don’t want to discuss those horrifying days of my life but it would be a lie if I claim that I have moved on and don’t remember anything. I still remember everything and they will be part of my memory as long as I am alive,” said he, requesting anonymity as he feared backlash even 21 years later. Fortunately, the cases against the students were withdrawn. However, this also meant that the police officers who unleashed violence on the students were also let off. Though a magisterial enquiry was ordered by the then Lt Governor Vijai Kapoor, its result was the same as one often sees and hears about in these enquiries. The enquiry was headed by the then deputy commissioner of police (South). According to him, several innocent students were caught up in the conflict and wrongly beaten up by the police and the local ‘land mafia’ was responsible for fanning the violence. Also Read: A Year on, NHRC’s Probes on Police Violence in AMU and Jamia Remain Testaments to Impunity By now, the striking similarities in the pattern of both attacks are evident. In both cases, students were brutally attacked without any provocation and communally abused, with an intention to debase and humiliate the Muslim community and an institution belonging to them. Moreover, in both cases, the police acted like a criminal marauding force, in brazen violation of all the established norms and procedures. It cannot be a mere coincidence that both in April 2000 and December 2019, the Central government was run by the NDA, which is led by the BJP. In 2000, the Union home ministry which commands the Delhi police was under L.K. Advani and in 2019, it was headed by Amit Shah. The attacks were carried out with a gap of nearly two decades, but when one takes a closer look at them, it seems the Delhi police used the same ‘toolkit’ both times and got away with impunity. In a sense, what happened in December 2019 was a repetition of April 2000. Such an assault on a university could happen again because the culprits of the April 2000 attack were not punished. Today, a majority of people might have forgotten about or do not know about the April 2000 attack. But the fact remains that those who faced the police’s violence still have a fresh memory of the brutality unleashed on them, as my acquaintance recently remarked.
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