 You're watching News Made Easy and I am on Indio Chakravarty and today I am going to talk about preparing for a third wave of COVID-19. You'd say, why third wave? We haven't even won the battle against the second wave. Yes, that is continuing. That will continue. But we need to be ready for another wave, maybe again in September, October as we saw last year. It can come again like the seasonal flu does. And if that comes, we will not be prepared unless we do it right away. And that is what we are going to discuss in today's episode. So I mentioned the seasonal flu. We all know that it comes sometimes in October, November and then lasts through the winter months and then peaks around February, March. There's no reason to right now believe that that is not going to be the case with COVID-19. We don't know whether there's a seasonality here, but the waves tend to show that there might be one. At least one should prepare for it, even if it doesn't happen. If it does happen, if it is something that comes seasonally, we have to remember that we will not be able to vaccinate our people by October, November when the next season, next wave could start. So for that, we need to prepare right now. Because why can't we vaccinate? Because as I said in my last episode, we have about 94 crore adults in this country and each of them will need two doses. And if we have to produce 188 crore doses of COVID vaccines, that can't be done before January, February or even March, April next year. So we have almost a year to go before we achieve 100% adult vaccination of COVID in India. And what we need to prepare for is just two or three things. We need to be ready with that. Number one is testing. We need to scale up testing dramatically because we know 80% of COVID cases are asymptomatic and it is these asymptomatic people who spread it. Why? Because they don't know. It's not as if it's their fault. And what happens is that they might wear masks outside, but when they come home, they take off the mask, right? They have no symptoms. They don't feel unwell. They have no reason to test. So what do they do? They share meals. They sit in the same room. They chat. They hug their children. They are together with their old parents and they pass on the COVID virus, the coronavirus, even though they themselves are asymptomatic. If they're tested regularly, those who are going out of the home, if they're tested regularly, tie up with companies, tie up with workplaces, tie up with various places, NGOs. If they can be given a test once a week, even once a week, then we'll be able to control many asymptomatic cases as in monitor those asymptomatic cases. And what will that do? As soon as you have an asymptomatic case, you need step two, which is isolation centers. Decent isolation centers with decent beds, maybe good food. Important thing is sanitation, right? Good sanitation, enough toilets for people to use, nutritious food, where they can go, where they can go and sit. They're already infected, remember? So it's not as if they're going to get more infected by being around other COVID patients. So they stay there. If they get worse, then you essentially move them to hospitals or treat them. In some of these places, you can even set up broadband facilities, give them systems by which they can work from isolation center, right? Instead of working from home. So the most important thing that you do then is that before they start passing on the COVID virus to others, the coronavirus to others in the family, they've been isolated, they've been moved out of that space. Some might say, okay, I have enough rooms in the house, so I can isolate in the house right now even though I've tested. So testing plus isolation centers, these are very crucial. Now comes the third part. The third part of course is that right now we know there are about 150 districts in India which have most of the cases. You need to put restrictions. You need to lock them down. You need to stop work here. You need to deliver food. How will you deliver food? There is Zomato, Swiggy, various cloud kitchens, so many delivery apps, Dhabas. The government just needs to give big contracts to these people. You know, there are millions of unemployed educated youth in this country who can be put to this kind of work. Many of them would have already been vaccinated or many of them maybe not vaccinated, but at least some of them would have actually had already got COVID previously. So they're COVID survivors, less likely to get severe case of COVID, less likely. I'm not saying impossible, but less likely. So use them, give them money, give them 10,000 a month people who have no money at all, no job. You'll have to spend about 2 lakh odd crore to do that, not more than that. Give them the job to do this work. Third most important thing is increase oxygen supply. Make sure that you can easily certify industrial grade oxygen, which by the way is pretty good quality oxygen, into oxygen that can be used for medical oxygen and then transported because transporting is a big cost. Transporting oxygen, put up oxygen plants in hospitals, create oxygen bed hospitals and what do I mean by that? I'm not using a technical term, it's just a standard. I mean, you understand what I'm saying, right? Get, take over a stadium, put a thousand beds there, put partitions, put oxygen supply tanks, put connections so that you can give at least low flow oxygen to these people. Set up a nice U nearby. One of the reasons why people are dying right now is because they're not getting oxygen. So as Faro Kodwadia, one of India's, Mumbai's most respected doctors have said that oxygen needs to be treated as a drug in this case. So oxygen is a drug. If oxygen levels have dropped significantly and oxygen has to be given, that is the first line. The second line is once a person is on oxygen, in some cases they need steroids if they have a lot of inflammation in the body. And then the third drug needed is some blood thinner to ensure there are no blood clotting inside the body. And these are just the three key drugs that doctors across the world say work, right? Nothing else actually has been proven to work. Many have been, I mean WHO has said that some of them that have been recommended by doctors don't work. Remdesivit does virtually nothing except reduce fever by 5-6 days. It has no impact on mortality, but you'll see people running from pillar to post for Remdesivit. Converless and plasma treatment. Controversial, no one has been able to prove that it works. And there's only some minor recommendation here and there by doctors. But again, we see appeals on social media for plasma. The key things are oxygen, some steroids and blood thinners and of course paracetamol to bring fevers down. That is what we need. We need temporary oxygen beds, oxygen hospitals to be created, isolation centers to be created. And let me tell you, just this year China created these things in 5-10 days. If they can do that in 5-10 days, yes, you'd say it's an authoritarian country. If an order comes, people will be too scared to not do it and they do it. Okay, we are a democracy, let's say, and therefore it'll take 3-4 times that amount of time. But we still have time. Spend 1-2 months to build things right now. Set them up right now for the future. Because we've already lost the battle as far as COVID wave 2 goes. Those who have to die have already died. Those who were infected are already infected. And that is the reason we need to prepare for the next 6 months. As I said, vaccination is going to take another 8-9 months even if the government manages to procure them, manages to import vaccines and give it to us. It will take some time. Two doses will take some time. Remember, AstraZeneca, in many cases we are being told that it is if you take the first dose now, you should take it 8 weeks later. In some cases, some countries are giving it 12 days later. So, therefore, even if some people get their first dose by, let's say, November, December, everyone gets it. Even then, we'll need another 2 months to complete the process. So, given that, we need to be ready right now for the next wave. If we are ready, as we know from the case of Madurai, which dramatically improve, increase the number of oxygen beds, oxygen supply and ICU beds, then we'll be able to deal with it pretty easily. We won't need a lockdown. We won't need people running around looking for hospital beds. We need to prepare for this. And finally, the big point here is that only the government can do it. No one else can do it. They don't have the capital. They don't have the ability. They don't have the access to data that is required. They can't operate without a profit motive. If they do, they'll do it only now and then disappear as company. So, no one's going to do it. It's only the government which can work for something that does not create profit. There is no point in doing an economic analysis right now about the use of these beds, the use of the resources that will be put into it. If it is not used, okay, remove them one year from now. But in reality, they should always be there because this is the first of these pandemics that we are seeing with global warming, climate change, with various kinds of stories of biological warfare. These might keep coming. And we have to be ready in such a way that they are powerful the course that people won't die because of them. They'll fall ill. They'll go to hospital. They'll get better and they'll come back. That's the only way if states, whether it is the center, whether it is state governments, come together and implement it.