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ACADEMIA Letters Alarming Situation in India due to Second Wave of COVID-19 Arnab Saha, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom Today we have to say with great sadness that the condition of India is very bad due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We all know when India first declared a curfew which known as ‘Janata Curfew’, at that time the condition of all the countries was very bad due to the outbreak of this epidemic. To save the country from this epidemic, the Prime Minister of India imposed a curfew on 22 March 2020 for one day. But it was not a one-day story that the epidemic would go away if the country were shut down. Therefore, all the people at the top thought that if India could be shut down for a few more days, then it may be possible to survive this epidemic. For this, the first phase of Lockdown was planted from March 25 to April 14, 2020. In this way Lockdown was planted in India in 4 phases e.g., phase 2 for 15 April to 3 May, 2020, phase 3 for 4 May to 17 May, 2020 and phase 4 for 18 May to 31 May, 2020 (Wikipedia, 2021). In these total 68 days lockdown, the total confirmed case in India was 190,609 and the total death was 5408 according to Worldometer website. This country of about 1.38 billion population was kept closed for 68 days. Despite the sanction of the central government, some state governments have outlawed food distribution services. Thousands of people emigrated from major Indian cities after the lockdown left them jobless (Sur and Westcott, 2020). As of first week of May, over 350 people had died because of the lockdown, with causes ranging from malnutrition to suicides, fatigue, road and rail crashes, police brutality, lack of prompt medical treatment etc (Elsa, 2020; Genttleman et al., 2020; PTI, 2020; Srivastava, 2020). Most of the recorded deaths were among poor refugees and labourers (Agarwal, 2020). India has also been suffering from a long-term economic crisis. The rate of GDP growth had dropped from 8.2% in January–March 2018 to 3.1 percent in January–March 2020 (Buchholz, 2021). This figure went negative in the first quarter of the fiscal year 2020-2021. The GDP growth rate for April–June 2020 was -23.9 perAcademia Letters, June 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Arnab Saha, arnab.dd@gmail.com Citation: Saha, A. (2021). Alarming Situation in India due to Second Wave of COVID-19. Academia Letters, Article 1391. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1391. 1 cent, which was the lowest ever recorded (Paliwal, 2020). Millions of migrant workers were affected by the closure of factories and workplaces, which resulted in a lack of employment, shortages of foods, and concern about the future. All of them, as well as their families and communities, went hungry as a result of this. The point is that this developing country is the only place where the poor die when there is an epidemic or a natural disaster. This is not a big problem for rich people in this country. Some people help with money because later they get tax exemption for this. Millions of common people have degraded from middle class to poor and from poor to extremely poor category and it will take over a decade for them to recover but within nine months, the world’s richest 1,000 richest people had recovered their COVID-19 losses (Oxfam International, 2021). According to report of Mishra, 2021, in 2020, the coronavirus pandemic could have reduced India’s middle-class population by 32 million people and pushed 75 million people into poverty. According to report of IANS, Business Standard, 2021, India’s top 100 billionaires have seen their assets rise by 12.97 trillion Indian rupees since the government declared lockdown in March. The funds were sufficient to provide each of the 138 million poorest Indians with a cheque for 94,045 Indian rupees. The main thing is that the incidence of corona virus cases has increased again April 2021. About above 350,000 new cases are coming every day. When there were thousands of cases per day of COVID-19, it was lockdown in India, but now there are over three lacs cases everyday but there is no lockdown in India, excluding some states. From the first week of March 2021, new cases started to come and with it, the number of deaths started increasing day by day. As of 12 May 2021, the total number of confirm cases in India is 23,702,832 and the number of deaths was around 258,351 according to Worldometer website. The death toll is much lower here because it is reported, the actual number is much higher which is probably unimaginable. There are many such people in India who did not get tested, but they died later, their number is not in the report. The death toll is so high that there is no place to burn people in cremation ground, the rotten bodies of people is now floating in the holy river Ganges in Uttar Pradesh state. According to most of the medical report of scientists, people think that it is a double mutant virus. The Indian variant of Coronavirus was first detected in March, and the government in New Delhi characterised it as a double mutant. They speculated that the mutation was the result of a cross between two strains. The Indian variant has two key mutations Britain and South African (Shaw, 2021). While the good news is that India has been able to make the vaccine itself. Now India has two home-made vaccines e.g., BBV152 (also known as Covaxin) and Covishield (COVID-19 vaccination in India, Wikipedia). But many people are still confused about how effective it is. Because Covaxin manufacturer Bharat Biotech reported that efficacy rate is 78%, in its interim analysis of its phase 3 trial (Koshy, 2021). Also, two more COVID-19 vaccines with Academia Letters, June 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Arnab Saha, arnab.dd@gmail.com Citation: Saha, A. (2021). Alarming Situation in India due to Second Wave of COVID-19. Academia Letters, Article 1391. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1391. 2 approval for emergency or conditional usage which are Sputnik-V and ZyCoV-D (COVID19 vaccination in India, Wikipedia). As of 12 May 2021, total 177,214,256 vaccine doses administered in India, including first and second doses of the currently approved vaccines (MoHFW, 2021). But if look at the population of India, very fewer number of vaccine doses have been given, it is only approx. 2%. The central government should take hard steps for vaccination because more people live in rural areas in India than urban areas, it is bad for many people to get vaccinated for the less of education. Many people of rural areas think that vaccination is not good for health, if they take it, maybe the disease will increase. The government needs to be very aware of this and need to vaccination awareness campaign for the people of rural areas. In the week leading up to April 25, the nation saw an 89 percent rise in Covid deaths relative to the previous week, as well as 2.2 million new cases – the world’s fastest seven-day increase. In the last few days, demand for oxygen has increased by more than 20% across the country. During a heavy oxygen shortage on 24 April 2021, 20 patients died at the Delhi. Four patients died in Gurugram and Rewari, Haryana both south-west of Delhi, all died when the facilities ran out of oxygen (Ellis-Petersen and Rourke, 2021). There are many more reports like this who are dying without oxygen. In the meantime, the loot of oxygen report is also coming (Rai, 2021). Black market is going on everywhere with medicines. Some such reports have been found where the admission of patients in hospital is closed because the admitted patient at the hospital is full. Despite being such a large and powerful country in the world, this country is not able to fight this COVID-19 epidemic. Many countries have already been ruined in this pandemic and now is the time for India. It is very difficult to save such a large, populated country from this epidemic where the health system is bad. In 2019, the total net Indian government spending on healthcare was 36 billion dollars or 1.23 % of its GDP. It really too low where the population of this country is about 1.38 billion (Healthcare in India, Wikipedia). Many more countries have reached out for help for India e.g., United Kingdom, United States, Russia etc. But no one knows how much it will help for India. After more than a year, this situation in India shows that Coronavirus is not going to leave this world so easily. References Agarwal, K. (10 May 2020). “Not Just the Aurangabad Accident, 383 People Have Died Due to the Punitive Lockdown”. The Wire. Retrieved 10 May 2020 from https://thewire.in/ rights/migrant-workers-non-coronavirus-lockdown-deaths Academia Letters, June 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Arnab Saha, arnab.dd@gmail.com Citation: Saha, A. (2021). Alarming Situation in India due to Second Wave of COVID-19. Academia Letters, Article 1391. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1391. 3 Buchholz, K. (2021, February 26). 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Retrieved April 26, 2021, from Worldometers.info website: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/ Academia Letters, June 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Arnab Saha, arnab.dd@gmail.com Citation: Saha, A. (2021). Alarming Situation in India due to Second Wave of COVID-19. Academia Letters, Article 1391. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1391. 5