 Hello and welcome to Newsclick. Today we're going to discuss the spread of COVID-19 in India and particularly its resurgence in cities like Delhi. So both these aspects are there. A second round of increase that is now currently visible but also it's spread throughout the country. When you look at the total number of COVID-19 patients, active cases around the world, total number of people who have been, till now, who have been infected and shown symptoms of the disease or what would we call identified cases. India is very rapidly catching up with the United States. The United States has been the front runner in the epidemic. It ignored initially the epidemic and it has paid the price of that because it's really spread quite far and wide in the United States from certain states which are affected earlier to now newer and newer areas. If we look at India, India is now number two but on the number of new cases and we have been saying this for quite some time, we have been number one for a long time now. Three countries are on the top of the list in terms of new cases. One is of course India which is almost touching 100,000 now. So within a day or so, it seems the new cases numbers will be more than 100,000. There is no flattening of discovery and we'll discuss this just a little later. The US is about 38,800 odd cases and Brazil is about 40,000 cases. So these are the three which stand out in the world from all the other countries who are all below 10,000, maybe one or two or above 10,000. I think we have Argentina which is about 11,000 cases but Spain is about 10,000 cases now but all others are way behind these three countries. So these are the countries which are today shaping the way pandemic is developing in the world and particularly in the case of India, we have the further issue that you have resurgence in certain areas. By the way, that's also something that's taking place in Europe. Countries which have controlled the epidemic earlier like Spain, Italy, France are seeing renewed resurgence of cases. So that's something to worry about there but it is nothing on the scale we are seeing for instance in towns like, in cities like Delhi where the numbers have gone down somewhat in the middle but it's come up again. We'll discuss more of this later. But if you look at the picture it's very clear that India is in a very critical state and we are at the moment seeing only the expansion of the epidemic, both geographically and also more numbers in cities like Delhi and Pune. Let's look at now the detailed charts that we use click on this has and we'd like to start with new cases. And if you look at new cases, you will see that some some of the states had flattened and gone down, but all of the states now except barring one or two seems to be an upward curve again. Here is Delhi, the numbers are rising and we look at it when you look at the cities charts as well. But if we look at for instance UP, it's continuously rising. If we look at Tamil Nadu, however, there is some flattening that has taken place. That's something we need to watch. And if we take for instance, places like Gujarat, they seem to have flattened earlier. And they still seem to show a certain degree of flattening. So we is a mixed bag as yet some states are rising. Some states are flat. Some states did go down for a little while as Delhi did, but has now started to rise again. So these are some of the picture. There are some of the issues that we need to take up in more detail. If we come to the India map, we don't have a district wise map as yet. But if you look at the India map, then you will see on our map chart that we have on our side, you will see that it is now spread to almost all the states. And states above 10,000 are the bulk of the Indian states. The bulk of the Indian states now show the epidemic COVID-19 cases have reached more than 10,000 in terms of active cases. We're not talking of total cases, which are of course larger. So more than 10,000 active cases are there in every state. If you look at total cases, it's clear that bulk of the Indian states are above 20,000. This is the number of total cases. And there are a significant number of those who are above 3,20,000. Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. All of them are above 3,20,000. So not a nice picture that we have seen. We had to look at the district level figures earlier in our show on Monday. And we had seen that it is spread to almost all districts. Very few districts today are out of the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic. So this is the large picture that we have that it has spread quite far in different districts. And therefore, the pandemic spread is now much wider and much deeper in the country than earlier. It's not a question of a few places, a few localities in cities and towns, but it is now quite widespread. And we do not seem to see any slackening of the growth of the epidemic. In fact, this is one of the things we had commented earlier that India is one of the few countries which in spite of a draconian lockdown did not show any slowing down of the epidemic. We had argued that this is because of lockdown was done prematurely without any preparation and later on it led to large scale migration and therefore the purpose of the lockdown itself was defeated. And that's because it was looked upon as if it's a large curfew, large law and order problem to be met by section 144 curfew and not by the measures which needed to be prepared in advance for lockdown to really succeed. We had a failed lockdown and we have spread of the disease and now it's really spread all over the country unless we have a collective approach with the government and the people working together. And the government would be really the central and the state governments. We will not really work out what is to be done at the moment. Let's look at the cities, for instance. So if you look at Delhi, it is now running at about 4,300 odd numbers right now. In the last, this is a seven days average. If you take a single day rise, Delhi saw roughly 4,300 number of new cases. This has happened in a matter of 20, 25 days that we have seen the figure change from something like 1100 to 4,300. So one of the sharpest rises in numbers that Delhi has seen. So this does create a problem that is it going to grow? Yes, why? Because the unlockdown now has meant that the metros are going to start starting. There's also talk about bars, cinema halls being made open. Already, Delhi markets, if you go there, you will find the crowds are there. If you go to the roads, you will see roads are quite full. So it's clear that Delhi, as it returns to normalcy, you have a sudden spike of cases again. And it sort of synchronizes with the unlockdown procedures we have followed. We have not succeeded in our so-called microcontainment by which people who are confined to their homes when they're ill, if they're very sick, they're taken to hospitals. So this isolation of the people, this has not succeeded. And it's not surprising because given the kind of density of population in Indian cities, this is very, very unlikely to succeed as simply as it is being thought of. If you put people who are sick, let them remain at home, they'll infect the families. They need other support people to come and support them. They will get infected. This is what seems to be happening, that we have cascading infections that are taking place. At least the good statistic which is still there, even though the numbers are high, both in Mumbai and Delhi, and Delhi particularly because it's showing a rising graph as of now, what we have is the active cases still remain relatively low. And if the active cases remain low as it is currently, then what happens simply is that at least your hospitals are able to cope with the kind of patient that may be coming into the hospitals. So the fact that if you have 20, 25,000 people may stretch the hospital system because at least 20, 25% of them can be seriously ill, maybe 15% go to the hospitals. But that is not a very big pressure in a city like Delhi or Mumbai, which can take the pressure of say 2,000, 3,000 people coming for COVID-19 treatment to the hospitals. So that's we are well able to take care of this hospital demand that may surge as a consequence. But if it continues for very long, this surge, then it is possible the numbers would need hospitalization would rise and we would have consequently problems. So that is something to watch, but at least the hospitals at the moment do not seem that they're likely to be overwhelmed. So the coming back to the issue, what is to be done? That's a key issue. What we see missing completely in the current scenario is that any response by either the central government or a concerted response by the central and the state governments, what is to be done? In fact, as of now, under the Disaster Management Act, all the powers are still centralized in the central government. We have also issued under the Ministry of Home, various notifications. It's also interesting, all these notifications are coming from Ministry of Home Affairs. It is still the nodal ministry for the epidemic is still home department, which is the police, essentially. The government, central government has said we'll directly talk to the district administration. Well, again, the approach is a top down administrative approach using the police by enlarge to try and control the epidemic. And the police is not equipped to do it. And it needs a much, much more inclusive approach of the communities of the people of the local administration and the state government. It seems to be happening. But it is amazing that the health minister, the health ministry, the health officials are missing. They don't appear anywhere. The prime minister who came in early declared lockdown, 18 days, Mahabharata war will be over, 21 days. The Corona war will be over. It's not completely missing. We don't hear of him talking about the COVID-19 again. And even about the economy, which there is a real crisis because unless you can address the problem of the epidemic, you are not going to be able to solve the problem of the economy either. If 4300 people become in ill just in one day in Delhi, which is what the tests show and the actual numbers could be higher, then it's very unlikely you'd reopen the city in any economic sense of the term. So you will still see people not consuming, not going to markets for consumption, except absolutely necessary consumption. People getting people to come and do stuff at home may not happen. So you are going to see a very big hit of the informal economy, which is already taking place. Necessities will continue, but that's only a small fraction of the economy. So under these conditions, we would have expected the central government and the ministry of health, particularly take the lead and say, what is what are we going to do? This hasn't worked. What is working? What is not working? And let's get everybody together and see how we can beat back the epidemic. At the moment, we seem to have given up. If we look at what the government is doing, it's talking a little bit of the economy. It's talking about defense, northern borders, and it seems that the attention is, at least for the media, is entirely on one particular case of an unfortunate young man, a very promising film career, who, by all accounts, seems to have committed suicide, but that has become the media sensation. And we have a complete witch hunt going on in the media in an attempt to take the attention away completely from the seriousness of the epidemic in the country, and also the seriousness of the economy. Coming back to the other issue, which is vaccines. We're all waiting for vaccines. We have discussed vaccines a number of times in our various shows. It's very simple. Yes, vaccines will control the disease. There's no question that we're all convinced it will control the disease. But the first set of vaccines which may come may be moderately successful. They will need to be tweaked, improved, before we have really much better vaccines available. But the first line of defense is going to the first vaccines that appear on the market. Now here is the catch. Austro-Zeneca, which is supposed to be the front runner, which is called the Oxford vaccine, has had one particular case. Probably the second time it is happening in the trials for Austro-Zeneca, that person has shown some adverse reaction, which could be the vaccine, which should be something else. That's yet to be established. The trials have stopped for the time being, and Serum Institute, which wanted to continue the trials, has also now suspended the trials after the Drug Authority in India told them to do so. So there is a bit of a question mark on the front runner, but let's also agree that all vaccine trials have to go through this. There will be unexplained illness which need to be checked, and if it is completely unconnected to the vaccine, the vaccine trial will again continue. So this is not surprising. This is apparently what happens in all vaccine trials, and that's why you have large phase three trials just to address whether there are such cases because of the vaccine. So I wouldn't think that is much cause to worry, but the second cause to worry, and that's really something we should start thinking about, that it seems that almost 8 to 9 billion doses of vaccines have been blocked by what would be called the rich countries, and they have blocked three times their population, each of them. So they have not just blocked for themselves, but they've also blocked three sets of vaccines, different sets of vaccines to cover their beds. So the US has, I think, procured already placed orders, not procured 900 doses of such vaccines from different manufacturers. Other countries are also following suit, notably the European Union and Australia has also joined that recently. In this context, will the rest of the world get the vaccines? Will they get vaccines in time? Will they get vaccines at a cost which is reasonable? Will they get access to the most successful vaccines? They're all open questions. India is lucky. It has at least three major vaccine manufacturers in the country. Sedum Institute is the largest generic vaccine manufacturer in the world. So we have some leeway, we have some leverage over the vaccine manufacturers. At least a part of the manufacture should be available to the Indian people. But are we doing anything to scale up the vaccine manufacturing by investing in more infrastructure for producing vaccines? What about the cold chain? We have done polio vaccines. Yes, that is true. But nevertheless the numbers were much smaller per year. Now we have to vaccinate 1.3 billion Indian people. And a lot of these vaccines, in fact, most of the first run of vaccines are going to require a cold chain. So are we doing anything about that? These are all questions. I'm not saying the government isn't doing anything. But what it is doing is not visible to us. There seems to be a shout of secrecy around both the government policies, how to combat the epidemic right now, the phase that we are in, or about the vaccines when they become available. So I think these are all open questions we have. And we need to ask the government. We need political parties. We need to have other media organizations ask the government. What is the plan on these two counts? And let's not think it's epidemic versus the economy. That way lies neither addressing the economy nor addressing the epidemic. I'll stop here. Do keep watching NewsClick. Do visit our website.