While the world grapples with the raging pandemic, India has pulled up its socks in confronting it head on. Figures elsewhere and in the country are a tell-tale story even as India’s burgeoning health sector revs up reforming its infrastructure and emerging as a good investment option in the process. Vinita Pathak enlists the proactive measures government took to turn the situation around.
India is one of the few countries in the world that has tackled the Covid-19 crisis in an exemplary way. A country with a population of more than a billion people, the second-largest in the world, India has fared extremely well on Covid-related indicators among nations.
The Covid-19 numbers game
In order to understand how India successfully tackled the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s important to analyse the ‘astronomical’ numbers.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) data, in India, between 3 January 2020 and 16 June 2021, there have been 2,95,70,881 confirmed cases of Covid-19 with 3,77,031 deaths. As of 7 June 2021, a total of 23,88,40,635 vaccine doses have been administered in the country. In the same period, the United States registered 3,31,51,678 Covid-19 cases and reported 5,94,888 deaths, according to WHO. India’s population stands at 1.37 billion while the United States at about a third of India’s at 33,01,60,000 people. For better comparison, USA would have registered 18,65,945 fatalities (almost 12 times the number of Covid-related deaths India witnessed) if its population size was that of India’s and UK would have seen 15 times more deaths counting to 1.6 million if its population was the size of India. In fact, in UK, this number would be nearly 2.5 per cent of the country’s population.
India’s health sector
When the world was still figuring out how to tackle one of the worst pandemics of recent times, India had already taken a leap in terms of Covid-19 management. After the initial hiccups and scares, India managed to revive its health sector and pull itself out of the widespread public health crisis.
The NITI Aayog released a report on 30 March 2021 detailing the range of ‘investment opportunities in various segments of India’s healthcare sector including hospitals, medical devices and equipment, health insurance, telemedicine, home healthcare and medical value travel.’ The Indian healthcare industry, one of the largest sectors of the country’s economy, is expected to reach USD 372 billion in 2022, both in terms of revenue and employment. NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant remarked that the ‘Covid-19 pandemic has not only presented challenges but also several opportunities for India to grow. All these factors together make India’s healthcare industry ripe for investment.”
According to the report, ‘Covid-19 is likely to catalyze long-term changes in attitudes towards personal health and hygiene, health insurance, fitness and nutrition, as well as health monitoring and medical check-ups. The pandemic has also accelerated the adoption of digital technologies, including telemedicine. Furthermore, there is a growing emphasis on the emergence of public-private partnership models in India’s healthcare sector.’
Proactive government measures helped recovery
The proactive and swift decisions taken by the government of India went a long way in giving the necessary time to the country’s health industry to prepare for the pandemic. First, when the Covid-19 situation began to worsen worldwide in early 2020, even as most countries around the world were contemplating drastic measures such as a complete lockdown, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the national lockdown on 25 March 2020 and India, with its 1.37 billion people, went into a total shutdown.
It wasn’t an easy decision and more difficult was its implementation but India made it happen and so did its people. The lockdown in India was the biggest on the planet. When the second wave hit India in 2021, the government moved swiftly this time too. Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally oversaw the situation.
In April 2021, he had called several video-conference meetings with multiple CMs at one time to discuss the ground zero situation of the second wave in the country. Since 6 May 2021, the PM was calling up the state Chief Ministers ‘individually’ to discuss Covid-19 strategy one-on-one and ensure all related demands, that mostly included demand for more oxygen and vaccines, are met with immediate effect. The PM directly asked the Chief Ministers of their requirements, side-lining the bureaucracy and any unnecessary delays.
Based on his interaction with the state leaders, PM Modi asked the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to inform states about the vaccine supply at least a fortnight in advance.
The country’s success stories
During the Covid-19 pandemic, India wrote several success stories. The Atmanirbhar Bharat (Self-Reliant India) mission was launched during the Covid-19 crisis and has been a driving force in achieving self-reliance in critical areas during this time. In January 2020, for example, India’s local manufacturers did not have the capability to produce PPE kits like body coveralls and the nation was entirely dependent on imports. However, India soon developed a successful indigenous supply chain of PPE kits in 60 days, marking a big win for self-reliant India.
By September 2020, India had become the second largest producer of PPE Kits globally with a daily production of more than five lakh PPE kits, according to the Union Minister for Chemical and Fertilizers D V Sadananda Gowda.
The government, through coordinated efforts, developed an efficient ecosystem where local manufacturers could be guided by bigger players in the market and industry associations. The government also constituted an empowered committee ‘to manage the operational challenges and for facilitating the availability of time-critical medical supplies.’
By 12 May 2020, India was manufacturing 2,00,000 units of PPE Body Coveralls and 2,00,000 units of N95 masks on a daily basis. In July, India exported 23,00,000 personal protection equipment (PPE) to the US, UK, UAE, Senegal, Slovenia, etc.
During the second wave, a similar crisis of medical oxygen was addressed at war footing by the government. Not only did the government step up manufacturing of Liquid Medical Oxygen (LMO) by roping in relevant private and public manufacturing entities, it announced guidelines for swift and uninterrupted transportation of the same.
Foreign media writes off India’s success story
It’s not the first time that foreign media has written off India’s success and achievements globally. In the last decade, since India has taken a strong stance on global issues, taken stern measures to protect the interest of its people and brought in new laws and policies to the same effect, foreign media has been critical of the ‘New India.’Several international media outlets, publications and think tanks criticised decisions made by the Indian government to overcome the Covid crisis. They also showcased India as the global Covid-hotspot when the most advanced nations like USA, UK and several European countries were in a far worse condition.
‘Foreign Policy’ raised aspersions on the effectiveness of the lockdown in India and later in June 2020 published another article headlined ‘India has bungled its coronavirus crisis.’
An article published in the ‘Washington Post’ read that the Modi government took a series of ‘reckless decisions’ and that invited the second wave in India. ‘The Boston Review’ said, in July 2020, ‘The government’s inadequate and impetuous management of the pandemic reflects an effort to win international approval by following the paradigm of advanced economies, without heeding the ethical urgency of providing a robust program of relief, both medical and economic.’
And all of this, when India’s case fatality rate has been consistently below the world rate!