“The Scars this Wave has Left May Never Heal”: India’s COVID-19 Crisis

Just as India’s COVID-19 cases were lowering and the virus seemed to abate, India was hit worse than ever. Cases are fluctuating and crematoriums are flooded with corpses. The healthcare system has crumbled, hospitals are full, and citizens turn to the black market as a last measure to acquire declining resources. 

Dr. Dimple Arora was a dentist who passed away on April 26, after losing her unborn child. She was diagnosed with COVID-19, and her pregnancy made her vulnerable to the disease. Before her passing, she recorded a video to the public. She appeared pale and struggled to talk. She said “Do not take corona lightly.” Despite feeling evidently ill, she said that she wanted to convey her message to all. 

Dr. Dimple’s husband, Mr. Chawla said in an interview with BBC News that “[COVID-19] was going down here in India, but it came like wildfire, people unguarded.” He added, “Earlier it was the elderly, now it’s the young.”

India was the world’s leading manufacturer for COVID-19 vaccines, but now more than 300,000 cases are occurring per day, which isn’t an accurate representation due to the amount of COVID-19 cases that go unreported or undercounted. It’s important for the world to know about this ongoing crisis in India, how it started, and how the whole country is affected. 

 

The Surge of India’s Second Wave of COVID-19

“We completely let down our guard and assumed in January that the pandemic was over—and COVID surveillance and control took a back seat,” says K. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation in India. 

The Kumbh Mela festival was held on April 1. During this event, 3.5 million Hindu devotees gathered at India’s holiest river, the Ganges. This event became a super spreader of the virus. Cases fluctuated from less than a hundred cases a month in February, to 2,000-2,500 during April.

Due to India’s dense population, public gatherings gather crowds of thousands. There is no sense of space, and everybody is compressed against each other. 

Public spaces such as cinemas, restaurants, bars, malls, and schools were allowed to open up since October last year. Wedding ceremonies were no longer restricted, and politicians nonchalantly held many rallies across the country, encouraging large crowds to gather. 

“They should have implemented a lockdown,” says Aravind A., a freshman from AISG. He thinks that the country should have taken a stronger approach towards handling the pandemic, regardless of whether or not COVID-19 cases seemed to be dropping. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a speech after the Kumbh Mela pilgrimage celebration on April 17th. He exclaimed through a microphone, “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a crowd this big.” This event became a super spreader for COVID-19, and from there on, things took a turn for the worst. 

 

Crumbling Healthcare System and Flooded Crematoriums

The Indian healthcare system moved on to tackle other health issues and converted their COVID-19 facilities to what they were originally focused on. This explains the hospitals’ dire situation. 

Acquiring a bed in a hospital is practically unattainable, due to the mass numbers of patients. Patients in critical condition who are placed in the ICU are at great risk of death due to the lack of oxygen availability in hospitals. 

Some patients are being asked to bring their own supplies to the hospitals in response to the shortage of resources. 

A resident doctor in India, Manasi S., said in an interview with VICE News, that the emergency department is managing all branches in the hospital. These include emergency care, the patient’s ward, and the ICU.

She adds, “These patients have been with us for a while. We can’t really send them to other hospitals because there are no other hospitals taking them in.”

“We have studied for more than ten years, and still we are so helpless,” says Rimi, a surgeon working in the same hospital as Manasi. 

The crematoriums in India are in worst condition than the hospitals. The fires from the crematoriums blaze all day and night, like small infernos. 

“We can’t even handle the number of bodies coming in by the day,” says Hermant Kurma, a priest at a crematorium in New Delhi. “Today, I’ve done 30 cremations myself,” he says. 

Workers at crematorium sites are not able to shower or change their clothes for days. They eat little amounts of food and barely get any rest. These workers are jeopardizing their own lives while working in a life-threatening environment. 

BBC staff member, Vikas Pandey has considered New Delhi his home for more than one decade. He had a friend whose father passed away. He says that his father was cremated alongside 20 other bodies, and he didn’t know which pile of wood to look at to say his final goodbye. “There was no dignity, even after death,” he says. 

“The dead are not being cremated properly according to [Hindu] rituals,” said one amongst many other Indian citizens to BBC News. He added, “There are only four priests here and there are too many bodies. There are so many pyres burning but there is still a long waitlist.”

 

Dwindling Resources and the Black Market

When the health care system failed its people and pharmaceutical companies were unable to meet manufacturing requirement for drugs, many people turned towards the black market. 

In numerous cases, people made prepayments to dealers online, believing that this would guarantee them merchandise. Instead, many of them got swindled. 

Prices for important medicine, oxygen supplies, concentrators, as well as sketchy drugs are drastically rising, and many people are unknowingly buying fake drugs. 

A lot of families are suffering financial distress. They try to acquire oxygen cylinders and medicines such as Remdesivir and Tocilizumab on the black market and have to pay high prices. 

Outside a hospital in India, a family member of a COVID-19 patient was telling a doctor to give his family member a dose of Remdesivir. 

“I got it somewhere from the black market,” the man tells VICE News. “We have the medicine but they are not administering it,” he says. 

Vishesh B., a freshman at AISG pointed out the startling contrast between China and India’s management of COVID-19. He says that, unlike India’s government, China took the necessary precautions and produced all the necessary resources to address any outbreaks of the virus all over the country. 

It’s easy for many to turn a blind eye to catastrophe when it’s happening someplace else. However, we should all take a moment to realize the privilege of living here. Here in China, COVID-19 outbreaks are immediately detected and acted upon much more efficiently.