ADVERTISEMENT

Menu

Leaders Apr 24th 2021 edition

Covid catastrophe

India’s giant second wave is a disaster for it

and the world
The government’s distraction and complacency have ampli ed the surge

Apr 24th 2021 Give this article

A pril 14th was a big day in India. Hindus and Sikhs gathered to mark the new
A year. Many Muslims celebrated the rst day of Ramadan at late-night feasts
with friends and family. In Haridwar, a temple town that this year hosts the Kumbh
Mela, an intermittent Hindu festival that is the world’s biggest religious gathering,

between 1m and 3m people shoved and jostled to take a ritual dip in the Ganges.
And across the country, the number of people testing positive for covid-19 for the
rst time surpassed 200,000 in a single day. It has continued to surge since,
reaching 315,000 just one week later—the highest daily gure in any country at any
point during the pandemic. Deaths, too, are beginning to soar, and suspicions
abound that the grisly o cial toll is itself a massive underestimate. Makeshift pyres
are being constructed on pavements outside crematoriums to deal with the in ux
of bodies.

Listen to this story

0:00 / 0:00

→ Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android.

This horrifying second wave is a catastrophe not only for India but for the world.
Allowing the virus to circulate unchecked increases the risk that dangerous new
strains will emerge. One worrying variant rst detected in India, called the “double
mutant”, has already been found in several other countries, including America and
Britain. Even as scientists labour to understand how big a threat it poses, more
variants are appearing.

A more immediate consequence of India’s second wave for the rest of the world is a
disruption to vaccine supplies. India had hoped to be the world’s pharmacy. But
with case numbers exploding the government has restricted exports of vaccines. In
the rst half of April India shipped just 1.2m doses abroad, compared with 64m in
the three prior months. The Serum Institute of India, a private company that
manufactures the AstraZeneca vaccine, has defaulted on commitments to Britain,
the European Union and covax, a scheme to supply more shots worldwide. African
countries that had been counting on India to provide them with vaccines are
looking on in dismay.

ADVERTISEMENT
With its crowded cities and rickety health care, India is not an easy place to curb an
infectious disease. Yet some parts of the country were remarkably successful for a
time at slowing transmission. Deaths from the rst wave of the pandemic, which
peaked in September, were surprisingly low, for reasons that are not clear. And
Narendra Modi, the prime minister, was quick to institute a nationwide lockdown a
year ago, albeit one that failed to plan for the millions of unemployed migrant
workers who were at rst corralled, destitute, in cities and then allowed to return to
their native villages, taking covid-19 with them.

In short, until earlier this year, India’s government, like so many others, had a
patchy but not disastrous record in ghting the pandemic. But through
complacency and distraction, Mr Modi has allowed things to spiral out of control.
In January he boasted, “We not only solved our problems but also helped the world
ght the pandemic.”Yet in early March, as cases began ticking up in the opposition-
run state of Maharashtra, his government, far from helping, attacked the state
government in the hope of bringing it down.

Mr Modi’s unrelenting quest for partisan advantage has also been on display in West
Bengal, one of four states holding elections this month. He and his lieutenants, like
their rivals, have held countless huge rallies during a weeks-long campaign,
without masks or any form of social distancing. This risks propagating the
pandemic among the state’s 100m people, of course, but it has also distracted the
government from ghting the spread of the disease. Amit Shah, Mr Modi’s right-
hand man and the home minister, was on the campaign trail for 12 of the rst 18
days of April.

That may help explain why Mr Modi’s vaccine policy has been such a shambles. By
mid-February the government had ordered barely enough doses to protect 3% of the
population (not counting those it is hoping to get from covax). Keen to promote
India’s scienti c prowess, regulators approved Covaxin, an indigenous vaccine,
before it had completed all the necessary trials, even as they insisted that foreign
shots must clear extra hurdles. Less than 10% of the population has received a rst
dose of vaccine. This is more than in many countries, but India is a huge vaccine-
producer and could have done better.

There are signs of improvement. On April 13th the government announced fast-
track approval for imports of vaccines that have been approved by various rich
countries. It is also belatedly throwing money at procurement. This week it said it
would release some $400m to help the Serum Institute boost production. Mr Modi’s
Bharatiya Janata Party (bjp) called o its remaining big election rallies on April 18th.
And on April 19th the government updated its vaccine policy to allow anyone over
the age of 18 to get a shot, starting next month.

That is of limited use, however, given the shortage of supply that prevails in most of
the country. Several states have already run out. India is vaccinating only 3m people
a day, or 0.2% of the population, barely exceeding some rough estimates of the real
number of daily infections. And even if production increases or more doses arrive
from abroad, the current wave is too severe to be stopped by inoculations alone.

The irony is that, having won election after election, Mr Modi commands
tremendous authority. He is India’s most powerful prime minister in a generation.
The bjp controls both houses of parliament, and runs most state governments. If
there was ever a moment to make use of all this clout, this is it.

Mr Modi should adopt strict curbs on mass gatherings right away—including the
religious events he promotes as part of his Hindu-nationalist ideology. He ought
also to be trying to limit travel around the country, without leaving migrant workers
high and dry, as in his rst lockdown. The health minister, who thinks diseases can
be cured with the help of cow urine, must go.

Ways must quickly be found to ramp up vaccine production. That does not mean
seizing control of private rms or their output, but rather helping them secure the
supplies they need from countries such as the United States. Unless India’s second
wave is brought under control, the entire world will su er. 7

Dig deeper

All our stories relating to the pandemic and the vaccines can be found on our coronavirus
hub. You can also listen to The Jab, our new podcast on the race between injections and
infections, and nd trackers showing the global roll-out of vaccines, excess deaths by
country and the virus’s spread across Europe and America.

Recommended

ASIA

India is struggling with a catastrophic

second wave

GRAPHIC DETAIL

Tracking covid-19 excess deaths across

countries