Happy Sunday! With the ongoing COVID Crisis in India, it only felt natural that we talk about this topic. Both of us have been deeply impacted by the crisis in India, as we have family that lives there. Scroll down to hear our stories, stats, and what you can do to help.
Almost every country in the world is struggling with COVID, but you may be wondering, “how did it get this bad?”
In February and March, COVID cases decreased significantly. According to the Washington Post, India was getting the same number of cases as New York per day, which is great progress since India is a very populated country. As things started to get better, people felt confident, and felt that it was safe to go out. Indians were gathering in large groups and ditching their masks. Additionally, Prime Minister Modi started to remove some restrictions, and was encouraging others to participate in large political rallies and religious festivals.
Many blame the Prime Minister for letting things unravel so quickly; the government officially imposed a lockdown more than 2 weeks after COVID cases surged. Now, hospitals are having oxygen shortages, running out of hospital beds, and finding a place to get the vaccine is difficult.
According to Johns Hopkins, on May 6th, India reached an all time high with 414K new cases. Now, India is reaching an average of 200K-250K cases per day. Additionally, there are about 3K-4K new deaths every day. Fighting this infection will be hard, as only 3% of Indians are fully vaccinated.
According to BBC News as of May 1st, about 150 million shots have been given, equivalent to 11.5% of India's 1.3 billion people. Despite being the world's biggest producer of vaccines, the country is suffering an internal shortage and has placed a temporary hold on all exports of AstraZeneca to meet domestic demand.
More than 13 million people aged 18-45 have registered for the jab, but states including central Madhya Pradesh and hard-hit Maharashtra have said they will not start vaccinating this age group on May 1 as planned due to supply problems.
Experts believe India should ramp up vaccination in areas of high transmission and in five states where elections are being held.
Bhramar Mukherjee, a biostatistician at the University of Michigan, told the BBC the country needed to administer 10 million shots daily "instead of being complacent with three million".
Another main challenge with vaccine distribution is storing vaccines at the correct temperature. According to National Herald India, there would be limited capacity in India to store, let alone transport vaccines to all parts of the country if they require minus 20 deg C or minus 70 deg C temperatures. India should go with vaccines that require storage and transport in liquid form (that is, between 4 deg C and 10 deg C) and not the ones that have to be kept frozen.
India struggled with both delivery logistics and vaccine hesitancy during the initial phase of its campaign, but supplies now appear to be the problem, said Ramanan Laxminarayan, an epidemiologist at the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy, a research think tank based in Washington, D.C., and New Delhi.’
The Indian official said a new production facility in the southern city of Bangalore for vaccine maker Bharat Biotech was expected to be up and running by the end of April or early May, easing the squeeze on supplies.
I (Shreya) went to India during the COVID crisis. It wasn’t expected to get this bad, so my family decided to go. Originally, we went for a small family wedding, but altogether, my parents preponed our trip, and the wedding ended up getting cancelled. I was able to see what was happening in India, literally, and not over the news. To my surprise, when cases were starting to increase, many people were not wearing masks properly, or wearing them at all. People still didn’t understand how dangerous the new strain was, and they weren’t taking things seriously. My family and I looked like aliens wearing double masks, face shields, and using hand sanitizer every few minutes.
I live in Hyderabad, which is a huge city in South India. The city is densely populated, so the virus spreads extremely fast. Since it is a big city, there are a lot of poor people, and these people don’t have access to masks or hand sanitizer because they can’t afford it. It was extremely sad to see so many people who definitely wanted to protect themselves, but couldn’t.
As the day for our flight back arrived, Hyderabad imposed a mask fine. When this happened, I started to notice that many people started wearing masks again.
When we go out on walks or ride our bikes here in the US, most of us don’t wear a mask because we don’t usually see that many people going around in our neighborhood. Personally, I’ll maybe see one or two other people walking on the same street as me, and these people are far from me. But in India, this doesn’t work. You have to wear a mask when walking outside because there are so many people walking around you.
Overall, I was disappointed to see the COVID crisis in India. Yes, part of the disappointment was the government for taking actions so late. But, I was extremely disappointed to see citizens of India not protecting themselves, and taking COVID lightly and as if it didn’t exist. I hope that within the next few months cases drop significantly, but I do hope that the second wave is a reminder to all that things can get out of hand within a few days.
There are several ways you can help India’s COVID crisis. Whether it be educating yourself or donating every action counts. Here are some ways you can help!
UNICEF USA is supporting India's health care workers by providing critically needed supplies like oxygen concentrators, testing systems, PPE kits and personal care products. To donate, click here.
Oxygen for India distributes medical oxygen to vulnerable people. The organization is not a registered 501C3, but donations can be made to the group through the global non-profit Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy (CDDEP).
American India Foundation is taking donations to pay for equipment like hospital beds and medical oxygen.
Vibha concentrates its efforts on improving the lives of children. Donors can allocate their money to food and hygiene kits for families or to oxygen concentrators.
If you have family in India, it will be a hard conversation to have, but talk to them about being safe. It’s important that you help your own family stay safe, and protected. Buy them face shields, extra masks, hand sanitizers, and teach them how they can protect themselves from the newest variant of COVID-19.