India’s COVID-19 situation continues to escalate, with numbers near or exceeding 20,000 new cases per day now being the new norm.
The prospect of COVID-19 becoming all but uncontrollable in India is becoming ever more plausible. India’s COVID curve is rising at an ever increasing rate with no signs of abating. This upwards curve would suggest that there is far worse to come.
The opinions of experts on the matter has, in tandem with the caseload, become ever more bleak. Dr Jayaprakash Muliyil, former principal of the Christian Medical College in Vellore and chairman of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the National Institute of Epidemiology discussed the matter in a 37-minute interview with Karan Thapar for The Wire. Dr Muliyil said he “accepted and agreed with Harvard professor Ashish Jha’s forecast, that India could see a total of 200,000 cases a day by August.” Dr Muliyil believes that half of the country, amounting to 670 million people, could eventually be infected.
Lockdowns have been eased across many areas of the country as COVID-19 cases have increased, a fact that has been met with relief by some and outright condemnation by others. According to Al Jazeera
“The capital district of the northeastern state of Assam on the Bangladesh border has reimposed a full lockdown until July 12 following a spike in cases. Another border state, West Bengal, has extended its lockdown until July 31. However, in India’s worst-affected states – Maharashtra which includes the financial hub of Mumbai, and Delhi, home to the federal capital of New Delhi – most of the lockdown restrictions have been eased.”
Across many European nations the easing of COVID-19 lockdown measures has thus-far been successful. However, these countries eased restrictions after cases showed a consistent decline. India, on the other hand, began easing lockdown measures at the very start of the inclining curve. Such a decision may see India with far more cases than initially anticipated given their consistently low figures earlier in the year despite sharing a border with China.
Other nations are also not faring well. The US, a country whose case count has consistently numbered far in excess of every other nation since relatively early in the pandemic, is now facing a second wave of COVID-19 cases. Political rallies and protests have seen considerable crowds gathered. Such occurrences are likely to be the reasoning behind this second surge.
Globally COVID-19 cases now exceed ten million. The total number of cases now stands at 10,280,155, with 505,141 associated deaths. New cases are now rising more rapidly than ever before, along with the US, India is among the countries paving the way for these new cases. Should the situation continue to escalate, it is likely that the Indian health infrastructure could be entirely overwhelmed.