 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. We are back with our weekly discussion on COVID-19. What its impact is and what are the likely trajectory for the future? Let us first look at the numbers. We have crossed 100,000 more than 100,000 dead last couple of days back and we are, as usual, we are the highest in terms of new cases. That means we are still the fastest growing numbers in the world on COVID-19. But the next is 34,000 United States, the 12,000 France, 10,000 Russia, and all other countries below 8,000. So we are seven times, for instance, Russia and France and we are twice that of the United States. So clearly India is still the leading country in terms of COVID-19 growth. We are not going to talk too much about the numbers today. Let us go and have a quick look at what are the test to infections or confirmed cases. That is roughly at the moment about 8 percent or so, a little more than 8 percent, which means it has come down from the level 12 percent which was about two weeks back. So again, some consolation that the direction is now slowly appears to be in the right direction, but how much of it is going to stay like this and whether it will again rebound, we don't know. So you can see from the new cases figures, the charts are there in front of you, you will see that almost all states, which earlier were really growing fast, states like Maharashtra, Delhi have now started to definitely come down over the last three, four weeks. And the states which are still holding sort of at the same level are Tamil Nadu, this is West Bengal. These states seem to be holding. That means the numbers are not coming down. The new cases are still growing at a flat rate, but they're not climbing except Karnataka, which seems to be rising still. And if we look at the city's figures, then that also becomes clear that Bangalore still is rising, but the other cities are not driving the growth today. So Calcutta is also holding steady, and that's the reason, in fact, it's rising a bit. And that's the reason West Bengal still is cause of concern, whether it will suddenly take off or not. But at the moment, we seem to see that numbers are either declining a bit or holding, and we don't seem to see news spurts anymore. If we look at the states, the southern states have been harder, northern states less so. But if we look at the details of the northern and southern states, we'll then find that essentially the southern states, the urban areas were hit first. In the north now, you can see the urban areas now being hit. And if you go and see, hover over the districts in our map, you will find that a lot of the smaller towns are also starting to show up numbers. In the north, UP seems to be leading at the moment, followed by Punjab and Haryana. So this is the belt which you can see is starting to show numbers. We have to see whether the numbers hold. Do the numbers really hold in this part of the country? Or will it actually, again, take off? As we know that numbers can flatten for some time, drop for some time, and again rise. That's the nature of the epidemic, because it's going to take place in some clusters first, go to some other clusters. And it is not that until you have either the vaccine or you have two to three years of this epidemic continuing, will we really see the quote unquote herd immunity develop? Let's therefore look at now something else, which is what we should consider at the moment, that yes, this trajectory will see India reach the top, probably another month or so. We are reaching at the moment a doubly great of 40 days, not much of a constellation. That means our numbers will double. So at the moment, something like six and a half million that we have reached will double in another, say 35 to 40 days. So doubling rate has come down from 30 to 35 days, meaning that if the number becomes larger, it's better. So from 30 to 35 days, which it was about two weeks back, it's now about 35 to 40 days, which is good. That means we are still slowly increasing the numbers, but not as fast as we did earlier. But even at this rate, we are going to overtake United States another month or so. So you India still continues on its trajectory of being the epicenter of the global epidemic. We are the ones who are in that sense showing the largest numbers and continuing to show the largest number of new cases by far. So that's where we are at the moment. Things are not good. Our only consolation is the government has been talking about is the number of deaths per thousand or per hundred thousand are lower than others, which is as we have said earlier, an indication of a are counting not being so good. But more than that, the fact that we have a young population and younger the population, the effect of COVID-19, though it is serious, does not lead to death in almost all cases, except a small portion who could have other congenital or other hidden cases or even open cases of say suffering from already from cancer, immune problems, immune compromise, not all young people their immune systems are good. So those cases do have, could have serious complications COVID-19. Otherwise, most of the younger people below 40 do not show serious consequences of COVID-19. But let's face it, COVID-19 is still a serious disease. If you do have it, it is true that it is not that you will rebound within five days, seven days. The effects of COVID-19, as we now know, are continuing to last for maybe 30 days, two months, three months. Those things are also there. So it's not just a small flu, as Trump was fond of saying, that you get over it and you're perfectly hunky-dory. That's not what's going to happen. Let's come to what we now really should be looking towards is the vaccines. And we have Dr. Harshavardhan, our health minister, who has announced that India is going to vaccinate 25 crore people by middle of the year 2021 and sick next, the first six months of the year. We expect the vaccines to be available early next year, and therefore within six months, 500 vaccine doses will be procured and 250 million people will be vaccinated. The reason is, of course, because there are two short vaccines. Most of the vaccines we are talking about at the moment, either the AstraZeneca one, which is what is known as the Oxford vaccine, that is what is being produced by Serum Institute in Pune. And then you have the Gamalaya vaccine, which is again from Russia. And that they have promised 100 billion doses to Red Dies Laboratories or other vaccines we are considering. It seems to be there are mostly two short vaccines, which means if you get 500 vaccines, then you can vaccinate 20 to 50 million people or 25 crore population. Six months, 25 crore population is quite an ambitious target because we have to maintain the cold chain. And then we have to also see that the dosage, the gap between the two doses are maintained. So that's going to require a major logistical exercise, the cold chain that we have talked about. And then seeing that at the center where people have vaccinated, record is kept, they are tracked and they are again after the requisite gap, they're again given the second dose. So this is the challenge. But even if we do that, we are going to vaccinate only 20% of our population, which means the herd immunity that we are talking about was really still going to be far away. Of course, we are targeting the people who are the frontline COVID workers. I would include in that the entire utilities, those who maintain all the essential services, including the food and civil supplies, the transport, all of that are considered essentially essential services for the country. And of course, the health workers, including the technician who actually has the hazardous job of testing for our blood sample or our other samples to see that we are either affected or not affected by COVID. So all of this means that the entire health system has to be geared up. The public health system has to be geared up to deliver 500 million vaccine doses to the people in six months. We have to set up the whole supply chain, which should go down to the delivery centers where people can be vaccinated. It's not that the people have to travel long distance to get vaccinated. So that's a major challenge. We have to see how the central government and the state government fulfills this task. Because till date, the central government has more or less acted by dictates, giving directions to the police, giving directions to the government officials, but have not really undertaken a major logistical exercise of this kind. Fortunately, India's pulse polio program has a spine by which the cold chains are available for reaching to vaccinate babies. So we vaccinate 170 million babies in pulse polio program each year, but that's a simpler one. Why? Because A, they're oral drops. They're not basically shots which we have to take. So they're not flu shots equivalent. So therefore, this is going to be more complicated. Plus the gap between the two has to be also maintained. And since we're not going to do a pulse program where you do either the gap is easier to maintain because you do it on a particular day. After another X number of days, months, you again do the second pulse and every baby is abroad and the polio oral drops are given. This is not going to be that simple because it has to be phased out. It's not oral drops. It's a shot that has to be given. So that is going to take more effort. And therefore we have to keep track of the people you are vaccinating for the second shot. And that, as I said, is a major logistical exercise for 250 million people that we have undertaken to do according to the health minister in six months. Let's see how it works because as of date, the government has not shown efficiency in terms of the deliveries. In fact, its pronouncement has far exceeded its capability. And we hope in this particular case on COVID-19 that they will not botch up the vaccination program as the botched up the lockdown. As you remember, Indian lockdown was one of the most draconian ones. And yet it produced no slowing down of the COVID-19 cases, mainly because it was executed without any public health vision. It was really a police lockdown of the curfew variety. Now that's not a law in the world. COVID-19 is not a law and order issue. So that's not the way it works. It needs a whole set of other measures, including isolating the people who are infected, also contact tracing. Contact tracing is an extremely important element. And then following up on the contact tracing of the people, without this COVID-19 lockdown is only partially effective. And it tends to break down as it did because people had also no food, no jobs. And therefore the entire lockdown really failed in its intent. So we hope that this time the government will prepare a lot better. They have time, at least another three months to prepare for, and they will take the state governments into confidence. And this will be a partnership between the central and the state governments because health is a concurrent subject. It has to be delivered by the state government in the places where people are. Therefore it is not a top-down exercise. And unless the communities are involved, this will not happen. So we hope this time the public health vision of involving communities, the state and central government, local government officials working together will be the model followed. And yet it is a major challenge that's not underestimate the enormity of the challenge of vaccinating 250 million people and giving them two doses, which is what the health minister has committed to do. And hopefully in another six months they will be able to get 500 million people vaccinated by which time probably will be much closer to herd immunity. Six months you're still not going to reach herd immunity. So for a lot of people the problem would still be there. And we will not be able to go to what is called the opening of the Indian economy, because irrespective of what government says, the Indian economy will have the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic as long as the cases are as they are today, that you cannot have 75,000 cases per day and yet return to normalcy, which is what the government keeps on talking about. So this the vaccination will be the crucial element for us to reach normalcy. This is all the time we have today. Do keep watching NewsClick and do follow our COVID-19 discussions and also look at our charts on the on the NewsClick site.