Covid: India Crosses 3L Deaths, After US And Brazil

The second wave of coronavirus pandemic in India proliferated the cases to unimaginable levels. The official count of deaths in the country due to Covid has crossed the three lakh-mark, adding the country to the unwished global league with just two other countries on top – the United States and Brazil.

The repeated and prolonged lockdowns in various states have certainly helped in reducing the immediate load on healthcare facilities, but nothing could stop the deaths caused due to lack of facilities such as ventilators and oxygen. Till everyone is vaccinated, combating Covid-19 will require a cultural shift. For the past few days, India has been reporting more than two lakh daily cases and thousands of deaths and not to mention, each one of us has learnt the wounding sights of crumbling health infrastructures and over-jammed crematoriums like never before.

With 2,40,842 new Covid cases, India’s overall case count had surged to 2,65,30,132 this morning. 3,741 deaths were also reported in 24 hours. In addition, we have rural areas where testing is either non-existent or very low which might add up in huge numbers to the total tally of cases and deaths. While the United States reported 589,703 deaths from 33,105,188 cases, followed by Brazil with 448,208 deaths from 16,047,439 cases, India is now only behind the United States and Brazil as far as total death counts are concerned.

The second wave has already made our health system fall on its knees, or rather it is crawling now. Some experts argue that the actual numbers are actually ten times these shown numbers, which can be true too. The alleged sham surrounding Covid numbers is nothing but a huge debacle within our authenticity. Other developed countries have really strong primary-care facilities, a very systematic referral system, and robust processes for handling untoward incidents. In India, vaccination is the only way to reduce the severity of infection. Hard times need hard decisions, and let us face it with grit.