The first wave of COVID-19 came as a surprise. Nations around the world were ill-prepared to deal with the pandemic. Even the US and European nations, despite economic strength and scientific know-how, could not prevent the pandemic’s devastation. Thus, India’s suffering as a result of the new coronavirus during the initial outbreak is understandable, although certain measures taken by governments turned out to be incorrect in retrospect. But a year later, the more pervasive second phase was certainly man-made, as the Allahabad Supreme Court noted: “It is a shame that while the government knew the magnitude of the second wave of COVID, it never planned things in advance” . While the courts’ comments related to the Uttar Pradesh government’s handling of the recent COVID outbreak, it applies more to the central government that foresaw the country’s anti-COVID response from the start.
More recently, the government of India began to announce measures that have been long-awaited. The BJP leaders mocked Rahul Gandhi who described him as a lobbyist for foreign companies when congressional leaders urged the center to grant emergency authorization for the vaccines approved by foreign regulators. Now Modi’s government decided to allow the same foreign vaccines.
When the US government gave $ 11 billion in aid to eight major pharmaceutical companies to develop vaccines and signed purchase orders with them guaranteeing the purchase of vaccines as early as July 2020. The Government of India has now decided to provide a credit of Rs 4500 crore to Serum Institute and Bharat biotech. Such an excessive delay in responding to the request for tax aid has seriously undermined the production of vaccines to meet the demand for inoculation.
Given the rapid spread of the second wave, vaccination of all Indian adults is in demand. The center rejected it, claiming it takes a scientific approach. But the central government gave in to this demand, only after the daily new cases reached nearly 3 lakh.
Experts suggested that in pandemic times, scientific knowledge should be shared so that the capacity of pharmaceutical companies that haven’t discovered the vaccine should also be used to boost production. The United States government has arranged for Merck to manufacture the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. It took the government of India several months to do the same. Only recently did the center facilitate the production of Covaxin, developed by Bharat biotech, at three of the domestic state-owned companies.
Vaccinationalism is to be abhorred. But no country can export vaccines at the expense of its vaccination program. But the center decided to export 64 million doses, even as fears of a deadly second wave hung over the country. A false sense of triumphalism contributed to this irrational policy. The government of India did not impose export restrictions until after the daily new cases were lakhs.
Despite TablighiJamaat’s experience during the very early stage of the pandemic, the central and state governments of Uttarakhand sent more than three million people into a sacred plunge, turning the KumbhMela into a potential super spreader. Finally, Prime Minister intervened, quite late, to virtually cancel the Kumbh. An early decision in this regard would have been an effective public health measure. The Prime Minister was proud of the mass mobilization of people for the electoral rallies in Bengal. India’s electoral commission and the center refused to heed the sensible suggestion to shorten the protracted multi-stage popular congressional elections in West Bengal. So the late measures of the Modi government failed to stop the pandemic flood.
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