The covid-19 second wave is battering India with more than 3.5 lakhs new cases and more than 2,000 deaths every day. The hospital beds are filling up fast and there is also a huge scarcity of oxygen supply reported in some states. In this article a short overview is given regarding the humongous challenges and issues faced by India in controlling the covid-19 pandemic and also a global comparison is made.

Covid – 19: Management during first wave

The Table 1 presents population details, number of confirmed covid-19 cases and deaths due to covid-19 in severely affected countries. The population of these 23 countries combined is equal to India and the number of confirmed covid-19 cases and deaths due to it are 5.5 times and 10 times more than India’s count. The geographical size of India is 13 times smaller than all these countries put together. The objective here is not to argue that India is doing better in covid-19 management, but to portray the gravity of the pandemic. For example, the population of the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) is more than Brazil however, in geographical size UP is 35 times smaller than Brazil.

In the given table, in the last two columns are given what would have been the case loads and deaths in for the equivalent rate of positives and death rates in other countries. If covid-19 is spread at the rate of the USA in India, the number of positives should be at least 8% (from 1.63 crores to 13.24 crores) more than the present count, and the deaths should stand at 24 lakhs from the present 1.87 lakhs. As of 2019 OECD data, the number of hospital beds available per 1000 people is 8 in Germany, 7.1 in Russia, 5.9 in France, 3.2 in The Netherlands, 2.9 in USA and a mere 0.5 in India. These countries when compared to India have better health care infrastructure and ranked higher in health care outcomes, but still India was able to control the pandemic well during its first wave.

 

Table 1 Country's Covid-19 details

S. No.	Country	Population (Crores)	Number of Cases (Crores)	Percentage of population /Cases	Deaths (Lakhs)	What ought to have been the rate (Crores)	What ought to have been the death (Lakhs)
1	USA	33.10	3.20	10%	5.70	13.24	23.59
2	Brazil	21.20	1.42	7%	3.84	9.18	24.82
3	Russia	14.60	0.47	3%	1.05	4.39	9.85
4	UK	6.80	0.44	6%	1.27	8.86	25.59
5	France	6.50	0.54	8%	1.02	11.47	21.50
6	Italy	6.10	0.39	6%	1.18	8.80	26.50
7	Germany	8.50	0.33	4%	0.81	5.24	13.09
8	Argentina	4.45	0.28	6%	0.61	8.62	18.66
9	South Africa	5.93	0.16	3%	0.54	3.63	12.47
10	Spain	4.70	0.35	7%	0.78	10.11	22.62
11	Poland	3.80	0.27	7%	0.64	9.84	23.13
12	Turkey	8.40	0.46	5%	0.38	7.42	6.14
13	Romania	1.90	0.10	5%	0.27	7.50	19.43
14	Netherlands	1.70	0.14	8%	0.17	11.60	13.70
15	Greece	1.70	0.03	2%	0.10	2.63	7.89
16	Belgium	1.20	0.10	8%	0.24	11.02	27.30
17	Czech Republic	1.10	0.16	15%	0.29	20.05	35.85
18	Portugal	1.10	0.08	8%	0.17	10.37	21.12
19	Sweden	1.00	0.09	9%	0.14	12.77	19.02
20	Hungary	1.00	0.08	8%	0.26	10.43	35.62
21	Switzerland	0.90	0.06	7%	0.11	9.80	16.07
22	Bulgaria	0.70	0.04	6%	0.16	7.69	30.57
23	Denmark	0.60	0.02	4%	0.02	5.62	5.63
	Total	136.98	9.22		19.73
24	India	137	1.63	1%	1.87

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ as of April 25, 2021

 

Covid - 19 second wave in major European countries

The following Figure 1 and Figure 2 presents peak new Covid cases and deaths reported in a day time during the first and second wave in the severely affected European countries. For example, the peak positive cases reported during the second wave is around 11 times more than the first wave in France and in Czech Republic it is 70% more than the first wave. However, the fatalities were equal to the first wave in most of the countries. In India, a similar trend can be observed. During the peak first wave in the end of August and beginning of September, India reported around 1 lakh positive cases and around 1,300 deaths.

 

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/, as of April 25, 2021

 

 https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ , Accessed April 25, 2021.

 

Status of Vaccination

Table 2 presents the vaccination details of different countries. In vaccination, USA leads the pack having fully vaccinated 27% of its population. India is running the World’s largest vaccination program and the fully vaccinated population numbers in percentage is less than 1% however, 13.30 crore people were given at least 1 dose of vaccination. The present target should be getting the entire population vaccinated. Taking the vaccination to every person in a country of India’s magnitude is a huge challenge in terms of vaccine production, administering manpower etc.

 Table 2: Country wise Covid-19 Vaccination Details 

With a huge population and available resources, India was able to manage the first wave better than the majority of the well-developed countries. Even though, the second wave was more severe than the first one in the last few days, this is the time we as a single country need to put in combined effort to manage the pandemic effectively as every single life lost due to the virus is a great loss to the family and also to country’s human capital.

Sources

1. https://data.oecd.org/healtheqt/hospital-beds.htm
2. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ 
3. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations 

Image Credits: chanakyaforum.org

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