Corona: Has anything changed in India from lockdown to vaccine

Posted on 25th Mar 2021 by rohit kumar

Corona: Has anything changed in India from lockdown to vaccine

 

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the nation on television for the first time on March 19, 2020, after the Corona epidemic began and announced a day-long nationwide curfew on March 22. Three days later, a complete lockdown was imposed in the country, which remained in force for a few months.

 

Since then, there has been the same big wave of corona infection in India as compared to many other countries and it can be said that India has been able to keep the death rate due to corona also low.

 

Currently, corona vaccination work is going on in full swing in the country. But to save the most at-risk citizens, the government needs to accelerate this work.

 

Big wave of corona

 

Among the six countries in which the highest number of cases of corona infection have been reported, India is the only country that did not witness the second dangerous wave of corona infection.

 

In the middle of September last year, cases of corona infection had increased rapidly, but this year, the cases started to decline by February.

 

It is true that in the last month, cases of corona infection have increased rapidly in the country, but even now, it is very less compared to the data coming during the first wave of corona.

 

In the week ending on March 18, an average of 30,000 new cases of corona infection were being reported every day in the country. Whereas in the middle of September last year, when the corona wave was at its peak, 93,000 new cases of corona infection were being reported every day.

 

In America, where the highest number of cases of corona infection have been reported, three major waves of corona have been reported so far.

 

Brazil and Russia have also evidently witnessed two waves of Corona.

 

In recent times, even if the fast-growing cases of corona infection do not cause the second dangerous wave of corona, we can say that on the national scale, India has so far been successful in avoiding the second wave of infection.

 

However, this is not the complete picture as there are many states where several waves of corona infection have been recorded one after the other.

 

For example, there have been three waves of corona in the capital Delhi and Maharashtra is currently grappling with the difficulties created by the second wave of corona infection.

 

India's position at the global level

India has been witness to the Corona global epidemic for the past several months, from the rise in global statistics to the decrease in data due to the rapidly increasing cases of infection in India.

 

During the peak of the Corona epidemic in September, India had the highest number of infected and killed due to any other country in the world.

 

During this period, one-third of all the cases of corona infection were recorded in the world and one-fifth of all deaths occurred from India.

 

But in February this year, the situation got a little better, when India was behind seven more countries in new cases of infection and 18 countries in new deaths due to corona.

 

In February, the number of infected in India was 3% as compared to the data of countries around the world and the number of deaths came down to 1%.

 

However, in March, the cases of corona infection once again saw a boom, due to which the falling graph deteriorated again.

 

Low death rate

Look at the global data related to the corona epidemic, 6% of the deaths due to this cause occurred in India. At the same time, India accounts for 9.5 percent of the total cases of corona infection worldwide.

 

According to the Johns Hopkins University Dashboard, so far 27 million people have died due to corona all over the world, while the total number of infected is 12.3 million. Accordingly, Corona's death rate is 2.2 percent globally.

 

In India, when the number of corona infected was 1.15 crore, 1,59,000 people died due to corona and the death rate due to corona was 1.4 percent. Among the 10 countries in which corona has recorded the highest number of deaths, India is at the bottom.

 

Experts believe that there may be several reasons behind the decrease in corona mortality in India. One of these important reasons is the relatively young population here compared to many developed countries.

 

According to World Bank data, India has the lowest number of deaths among the 10 countries in which corona epidemics have suffered the most. Compared to these countries, India has the largest number of people under 65 years of age.

 

Experts believe that apart from this the genetic background of the population here and the exposure of the population due to infection is also the reason for the death rate, due to which the immunity power of the people here is slightly higher.

 

Statistics also indicate that India is being more successful in keeping down the Covid-19 death rate. In contrast to global statistics, in the last eight months, the difference in the number of new cases of corona infection in India and the number of deaths due to this has increased steadily.

 

Due to this, the cases of corona which have been increasing in recent times have not been such a big cause of concern in comparison to the first wave of corona which came last year. However, the pressure on the health system can still worsen the situation.

 

Strict lockdown

 

As the cases of corona infection started increasing in different parts of the country, the government implemented new rules to prevent the virus from spreading. But for the first time on March 22, a nationwide lockdown was imposed.

 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed to the people to abide by the curfew for a day and not leave the house.

 

After this, a nationwide lockdown was announced for three weeks from 25 March to 19 April and strict rules were implemented for this.

 

The lockdown rules were later gradually relaxed, but according to Oxford University's built-in index of strictness (strict rules index), very strict rules were put in place regarding lockdowns in India.

 

According to the Stringency Index, at the time of lockdown, India had the highest number of 100, which means that strict rules were imposed here. Among the 10 countries in which the highest number of cases of corona infection were reported, the strictest rules were implemented in India.

 

The complete lockdown implemented in India had a direct impact on the country's economy.

 

India's GDP shrank by 23.9 percent in the quarter of June 2020 as compared to the quarter of June 2019.

 

Return of normal life back on track

As the rules imposed during the lockdown were given relief and citizens started to resume their work as before.

 

In the Covid-19 Community Mobility Report, Google has measured people's mobility at different places compared to before the Covid-19 epidemic. According to this, the movement of people has increased with the relief of lockdown rules in India, compared to the 10 countries in which the highest number of cases of corona infection have been registered.

 

The report measures the mobility of people in six sectors - these include retail trade and entertainment, supermarkets and drug shops, parks, public transport, offices and residences.

 

Sluggish vaccination rate

On January 16, India started mass Covid-19 vaccination.

 

According to the website of Our World in Data, till the completion of two months of the vaccination campaign, that is, till March 16, about 3.51 doses of the corona vaccine had been applied.

 

In the 10 countries in which the highest number of cases of corona infection have been reported, India is behind only the United States, where so far 11.1 million doses of corona vaccine have been applied.

 

The Corona vaccination campaign in the US began about a month before India.

 

Looking at the corona vaccination data, it seems that in this case, India is doing better than others, but if you look at the figures on a per hundred person basis, only 2.54 people were vaccinated corona in every hundred people. , Which is the lowest compared to these ten countries.

 

But now the pace of corona vaccination in India is increasing.

 

According to the data of the week ending on March 16, about 15 lakh people are being vaccinated every day in the country. Fifteen days ago this figure was 5 lakhs.

 

India is the second-most populous country in the world in terms of population and it is a big challenge for the government to vaccinate the corona to the entire population.

 

If we assume that the rate at which the corona vaccine is currently being applied (1.5 million doses per day), that speed will be maintained even further and every person will be given two doses of corona vaccine, even then India will get half of its population. It will take at least two and a half years to deliver the vaccine.

 

But with the way the government is increasing the speed of corona vaccination, it can be expected that a large part of the country's most at-risk population will get the vaccine before the estimate.