From Mumbai to New Delhi, time is again marked by ambulance sirens and funeral processions. On social media, videos of funerals in super-crowded cemeteries, desperate appeals for tampons, oxygen and beds in collapsing hospitals are raging. Many drugs are now only found on the black market.
We are living here in a tragedy of epochal dimensions. There are no places in the hospital, no oxygen and no vaccines, reports Manish Tewari, an opposition deputy, on Twitter.
India, which until recently surprised the world for having tamed the pandemic, the country that seemed to have achieved herd immunity at the beginning of a mild vaccination campaign, it became the one where the virus runs fastest. A sudden acceleration: in just two weeks, from late March to mid-April, the Subcontinent went from less than 15,000 new cases a day to over 200,000. How could we get to 1.6 million infections in the last week when only at the beginning of March, the Indian Minister of Health, Harsh Vardhan, triumphantly assured that the pandemic in the country was over, over and cited Narendra Modi’s leadership as an example for the world of international cooperation (India was at the forefront of vaccine diplomacy in January). The optimism was based on comforting numbers: by mid-February the cases had dropped to 11 thousand a day from 93 thousand in September, the daily deaths did not reach 100 out of a population of 1.3 billion people.
There are at least three reasons that can explain this surge in cases that is bringing the country to its knees. The first: a close election campaign began at the end of February, with oceanic rallies (and a few masks), in view of the vote that is involving 186 million citizens in five states. Between these Uttar Pradesh, the most populous and most affected in the country. On 6 April, 800,000 people attended a meeting held by Prime Minister Modi in West Bengal, and very few of them wore masks.
Secondly, the great sports and religious gatherings give a strong push to the spread of infections: from the cricket challenge between India and England in Gujarat with over 130 thousand fans amassed, mostly without masks, ai millions of pilgrims who immerse themselves in the Ganges for the Kumbh Mela: for almost two and a half months, with peaks of 2.5 million people converging in a single day in a single city, in Haridwar, on the key dates.
What is happening is more than surreal observes Shiv Visvanathan, professor of sociology. Scientists believe the government has completely lost its bearings.
In addition tolowering of the guard in recent months, with the government having authorized meetings of up to 3 million people, a third factor that may explain the violence of this second wave is the Indian variant even if local authorities tend to diminish its reach, and the scarcity of data leaves room for some doubts. In a research published on April 15 on the outbreak.info website, B.1.617 (as it is called) was found on 24% of infected Indians (sample tests carried out between February and March) against 13% of the British variant.
New Delhi is focusing on the vaccination campaign to tame the virus. Since mid-March it has suspended the export of doses made in India in order to accelerate domestic inoculations, but the production of vials is in trouble due to the stop of supplies of raw materials from the USA. Now a turning point could come: the Biden administration would be willing to suspend the export blockade of substances for vaccines, which emerged from rumors gathered by Reuters after an Indo-American summit.
But in the meantime the virus is hitting hard in the country. On Sunday there were over 270,000 cases and more than 1,600 deaths. The peak still seems far away: according to forecasts by The Lancet Covid-19, deaths in June could exceed 2,300 deaths every day.