COVID-19 in India: A light at the end of the tunnel?

COVID-19 has impacted the whole world in a very significant way. Travel has been restricted, social events have been canceled, work has been moved to the digital sphere. The novel coronavirus pandemic, which, according to the vast majority of sources, started in the Chinese city of Wuhan, has also had disastrous effects on the economies of a lot of countries, it has exhausted their medical systems, and has claimed the lives of more than 3 400 000 people.

With the probable end of the third wave, many countries are finally easing their restrictions, and travelling has once again become a relatively feasible option. A factor, which has helped out significantly with containing the virus, at least to a certain extent, is vaccination. The amount of fully vaccinated people, and more importantly – the percentage of fully vaccinated people varies wildly from country to country, with more developed countries having a significantly larger vaccination rate, when compared to developing countries. For example, countries like Israel, the UK and the UAE have a vaccination rate between 50% and 60%, while counties like Congo, CAR, Madagascar, Syria and tens of more have a rate of below 1%. Nonetheless, the amount of fully vaccinated people worldwide has reached 355 million, which is 4.6% of the population of the Earth. Even if there is disparity, significant progress has definitely been made.

One country, however, where the situation got significantly worse recently is India, where currently around 10% of the population is vaccinated. In the previous three weeks, cases there skyrocketed, reaching a peak of over 414 000 cases per day. This completely overwhelmed hospitals and oxygen supplies, which caused a very serious number of deaths. It is estimated that a total of 275 thousand people have perished from the disease, most of them being more or less recent deaths.

Recent measures, implemented in India, such as extensive social distancing, self-isolation, and vaccinations, have finally paid off. For over a couple of weeks now, cases have actually been decreasing, making the situation just a little bit more manageable. The death rate, however, has stayed more or less the same. With resources depleted, and with the rise of further severe complications, such as black fungus, we will probably have to wait a couple of more weeks until the situation there has truly stabilized.

However, nothing is going to heal the scars of million of people, who have lost loved ones or friends. Statistical information doesn’t do the loss of human life justice. No matter where you stand on the issue, we can all agree that this a horrific tragedy, which could have been avoided.