Video Producer: Hera Khan
Video Editor: Md. Ibrahim
Yeh Jo Balti Hai Na... this bucket, this is India,1.4 Billion people. And this smaller container is our healthcare system. Our doctors, nurses, hospitals, beds, ventilators, all of that.
And today, using this bucket and a chota container, let’s try to understand coronavirus in India. Where the epidemic is at, what we are doing about it, and what next during and after lockdown.
First thing to understand is this model. In India, when anyone falls ill, they go to a hospital or a doctor, like water being poured in the small container from the big bucket. If the healthcare system can handle the number of patients easily, people enter, getting treated and cured and healthy people exit. All flowing smoothly, efficiently.
If the number of people falling ill suddenly gets too much for the medical system to handle, too much pours into the smaller container too soon and it spills over. This is literally people dying. This uncontrolled spilling over is what happened in Wuhan in January, what’s happening right now in Italy, Spain, France, Iran and of course in the USA!
What About India? What Is India’s Bucket Story?
WeIl, the big challenge is: India’s Big Bucket is very big. 1.4 billion people. And our small container is very small. We are short of beds, ventilators, our doctors and nurses are short of Personal Protective Equipment or PPE, we are even short of doctors and nurses with ICU experience. And even more so away from the big cities.
At the moment, in India, some spilling is happening. We’ve had over 60 deaths. This figure sounds low, but please note that these numbers can rise dramatically. Epidemiologists and public health experts look at the rate at which a country’s case double. How many days to go from 40 to 80, 80 to 160 and so on. In the US, positive cases have doubled every 2-3 days since March. The US had just 124 positive cases on 3 March and in 30 days, they have the most number of positive cases in the world. Over 250,000!
In comparison, India’s positive cases have been doubling every 4-5 days over the last month. From less than 30 cases on 4 of March to around 2,500* (India currently has 3,577 cases) now. But even at this rate, we can reach 80,000 by the end of April. From a seemingly handleable 2,500* to an unhandleable 80,000 in just 4 weeks! And this is not unimaginable. This is exactly what has happened in the US, Italy, Spain.
On the plus side, India placed travel bans from countries with high corona numbers quite early. Social distancing, isolation, was enforced on those with foreign travel history. Locating and testing anyone with contact history was done vigorously. We also have a much younger population so, better resistance
On the minus side, apart from India’s limited healthcare capacity, India’s corona testing strategy has also been questioned. Mainly that we’ve tested too few people, and not uniformly across the country. For instance, states like Odisha have conducted just a few hundred tests. They may as well have more positive cases, but we don’t know.
The other huge step we’ve taken is the 21-day lockdown. 21 days of enforced social distancing. This will help to flatten the curve. Which means it will slow down the rate at which people are falling ill. But while middle-class urban India is following the lockdown, we have all seen videos of thousands of India’s urban poor lining up for food, India’s migrant labourers crowding bus stations trying to get home or just walking. For them, social distancing has been impossible. So, how successful will the lockdown finally be in suppressing the spread of the virus is not clear at the moment.
Remember the lockdown comes at a huge economic cost: industry, commerce, import-export, agriculture almost everything is at a standstill. No economy can survive such a shutdown for too long. So, at some point, can’t say when, maybe in stages, the lockdown will have to be lifted.
What’s important is that Yeh Jo India Hai Na... it must use these three weeks of lockdown to make India’s small container bigger! To expand our healthcare capacity on a war footing, more isolation beds, more ventilators, more protective gear and clothing for all doctors, nurses and especially getting all these facilities to reach small towns and rural India, where the coronavirus will also reach at some point.
If we achieve this, then after the lockdown, though positive cases will still appear every day, the rate at which they enter the smaller container will be at a handleable rate. At a rate where we can ensure more recovery, fewer deaths, and ultimately Yeh Jo India Hai Na... it can defeat corona. And hopefully pay a lower price than other countries have. Stay safe!
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