Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Jan 30: Exactly a year after the first Corona infection was detected, India may breathe easy hoping the worst is over and another wave, higher and stronger, as was witnessed in many western countries, will not be knocking its doors.
On January 30, 2020, India detected its first case of Covid-19 when a 20-year-old medical student from Thrissur, Kerala, returned home from Wuhan, China, carrying the infection. A year later, India which recorded a cumulative total of 10,733,131 cases, still has 1,69,824 active cases which, however, is a much better situation than what was a few months ago. With a recovery rate of 96.96%, and two vaccines already rolled out, India is better prepared to take on Covid-19 today.
From January onwards, the graph kept rising and reached the peak in September with a huge surge of cases once unlock-I was introduced after 67 days of lockdown. In September, India witnessed the worst situation as daily cases ranged between 75,000 and 90,000 with the highest single-day spike recorded at 97,894 cases on September 16 and the highest number of single day death recorded at 1,290 the previous day. In October, the situation bettered and in December, both Bharat Biotech and Pune’s SII applied for emergency use of their vaccines.
India went into a national lockdown on March 25 which also led to an unprecedented migrant crisis. Indian economy was also hit hard with economic operations coming to a halt. The finance ministry released several stimulus packages catering to all sections of people. Like several stages of lockdowns, there was a stage-wise unlocking starting from June.
Ground Zero Kerala has been one of the most worst-hit states. The state currently has 72,239 active cases, the highest in the country, and logged 6,268 new infections on Friday, pushing the total tally to 9,17,630. Kerala had managed to rein in the virus last year when much of the country was struggling with it. But with international traffic, festivals, the spread of the infection could not be contained much. The death toll as of today stands at 3,704, which the state government claims is significantly lower given its high infection rate.
India’s biggest achievement perhaps was containing the spread of the disease in Dharavi, Mumbai, considered to be the Asia’s, and perhaps the world’s, biggest slum colony. Dharavi where people are cooped into close living quarters with shared toilet facilities was a huge cause of worry for the Maharashtra government. Experts and government alike feared that Dharavi where social distancing was next to impossible with rows of living quarters sharing common walls, would explode with Covid-19 cases, which happened but the tables were turned by rigorous testing, detection, isolation, and treatment. On the first anniversary of the detection of first Covid-19 case in India on Friday, Dharavi reported six new cases, after reporting zero new cases for two days straight. The continent’s largest slum so far has recorded a total of only 3,917 cases, while the number of active cases stands at 16.
Amid unlocking, several Indian states, including Kerala, Delhi, reported a second wave of Covid-19. After hitting the peak in September, the situation started improving and since has only gone downhill. The government on Thursday also claimed that India has succeeded in flattening the spike. The new UK strain of the virus that the authorities feared may run havoc like in several other countries, also did not damage much in India.
With rolling out of the mass vaccination programme from January 16 beginning with the frontline workers, India is expected to have reached the irreversible path to exit from the pandemic even as it is raging in fury in several other countries in the world.
