Covid surge

DURING the past week, Covid-19 was relegated to the background in India as Chinese transgressions in the Galwan valley grabbed the headlines. But the fact that India’s case count has gone past four lakh underlines the need to focus on fighting the pandemic. The country has witnessed an addition of one lakh cases in merely eight days; the ongoing Unlock 1.0 has seen about 2.2 lakh cases in only three weeks (June 1 to 21). And this surge could well be a precursor of the peak, which is expected in July-August. Though the recovery rate has improved to around 55 per cent, the ever-rising caseload and the mounting death toll are exposing inadequacies in the already overstretched healthcare setup.

On the testing front, the daily average has reached 2 lakh, but it is simply not enough in view of the country’s humongous population. States such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal have extremely low testing rates; their Covid numbers tell barely half the story. It was only last week that the Centre launched India’s first mobile lab to conduct coronavirus testing in remote areas. In a welcome development, the Drug Controller General of India has granted emergency marketing approval to a couple of major pharma companies for antiviral drug remdesivir for the treatment of severe Covid-19 patients. Even as a vaccine is nowhere in sight, research work needs to be ramped up so that effective drugs can be identified and put to use promptly.

Hotspots such as Delhi should set their house in order at the earliest. The Centre claims that Covid-19 management has been streamlined in the national capital — right from health surveys to the cap imposed on in-patient costs in private hospitals — but the situation on the ground remains chaotic. There have been reports of patients being turned away from one hospital after another due to shortage of beds or testing kits. What Delhi — and the entire country — needs is Centre-state coordination, not political one-upmanship. With economic activity in the revival mode, another lockdown is no longer an option. From now on, India has to face the virus head-on.