The new, increasing wave of corona infections in India refutes the lies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s far-right BJP government that the pandemic has been “successfully brought under control” in India. The numbers have been steady at over 10,000 new infections per day for the past week.
On April 20, India recorded 12,580 new corona cases, the highest number in over eight months. The total number of official corona cases has thus risen to 44.85 million. 65,286 active cases are currently being tracked.
As the entire apparatus for monitoring the pandemic and reporting and tracing infections has been dismantled, there is a colossal underreporting behind these numbers. Even during earlier corona waves, when there was still a limited testing infrastructure, later serological surveys showed that the vast majority of cases were never officially detected.
The current increase in the number of corona cases is directly related to the rapid spread of the omicron subvariant XBB.1.16. This subvariant first attracted international attention in India earlier this year. On March 22, the WHO added it to the list of variants “to be watched”. Except for India, it has been discovered in more than 33 countries.
Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) upgraded the new variant to variant of interest status because it is more infectious than other omicron subvariants and highly immunevasive.
The international health agency noted: “Currently, there are no early signs of a more severe disease progression. The first risk assessment is not yet complete and will probably be published in the coming days.”
Data from Seito Labs on XBB.1.6 indicates a higher rate of death and serious illness with this variant. However, due to high vaccination rates and previous infections, the effects of the virus are being mitigated for a large part of the population.
However, the unvaccinated, the seriously ill and the elderly are at high risk of developing a serious illness. In India, this means hundreds of millions of people are at risk, mostly the extremely poor, living in isolated rural areas or urban slums with little or no access to even the most basic health care.
The increasing number of infections in India not only threatens the population of the subcontinent, but the entire world. Hundreds of millions of new cases mean hundreds of millions of new opportunities for SARS-CoV-2 to mutate into new, even more infectious and deadly forms.
The Delta variant emerged in India in 2021, just as the Modi government declared victory over the virus. A similar danger now exists with XBB.1.16. The large number of subvariants of the coronavirus shows that it retains its ability to mutate rapidly and that natural evolutionary pressures favor vaccine-resistant mutations.
In India, as in other countries, the mainstream media has joined the official government pronouncements, which downplay the importance of the XBB.1.16 wave in order to make the population accept as harmless the permanent infection with a deadly and harmful virus.
So reported India Today citing Health Ministry sources that XBB is not a “dangerous variant”. Other media outlets echo this claim, advising people to “don’t panic”.
India’s ruling elites have a history of ignoring warnings of impending disasters, including the spring 2021 devastating second wave of the pandemic triggered by the highly contagious delta variant of SARS-CoV-2.
From early April 2021 until the peak of the second wave around April 30, India reported 400,000 new infections and over 4,000 deaths every day. The images of burning bodies piled on pyres shocked the world and showed that the death toll was far higher than was officially admitted.
Later, excess mortality figures showed that the 2021 corona wave was one of the deadliest public health disasters in the country’s history. Reuters reported at the time that a forum of scientific advisors warned Indian authorities in early March that a new and even more contagious variant of the coronavirus was spreading in the country. But the Modi government completely ignored these warnings. As the Delta variant spread across the country in mid-April and the media was already widely reporting a lack of critical care beds and shortages of essential medicines, oxygen and medical staff, Modi promised on TV he would “save” the country from lockdown – not from the deadly virus.
The government is reacting to the current Corona crisis with a similar refusal to admit obvious facts in order not to spread “fear”. The daily positive test rate in India is currently 5.46 percent and the weekly positive rate is 5.32 percent. Both figures indicate that the infections are spreading again, but their impact is vastly underestimated.
Rates are far higher in the capital, Delhi, and in Maharashtra, where the financial hub of Mumbai is located. Both areas were also the centers of the 2021 delta eruption.
Delhi reported 1,537 new infections last Tuesday, a staggering 430 percent increase in just three weeks. The positive proportion of 26.54 percent indicates a high number of unreported cases of infection, i.e. without a quick resumption of protective measures, a considerable part of the population could become infected again. Maharashtra recorded 1,100 new infections last Wednesday and 1,113 on Thursday.
29 new deaths from Covid-19 were reported last Thursday, although it is clear that these are only a fraction of the true numbers. Without proper testing and confirmation of previous Covid infections that have damaged the patient’s health, deaths from respiratory and circulatory collapse are dismissed solely as a result of the dead’s previous health problems. The part that the government’s grossly negligent response to the pandemic has in these deaths is faded out.
Overall, Covid-19 has caused the astronomical number of officially over half a million avoidable deaths in India since 2020. However, according to a July 2021 report by the US Center for Global Development, the actual number of deaths from Covid-19 in India was already between three and five million at that time, ie ten times higher than the official number.
Neither Prime Minister Modi nor any other Indian leader has expressed an ounce of concern at the high death toll, revealing their indifference to the fate of millions of Indian workers. They are merely showing publicly the true stance of capitalist governments around the world, which have officially declared the pandemic over, to ensure that the working class is working at full capacity to profit – regardless of actual conditions on the ground.
India long ago abandoned even limited measures to contain the virus, but its rhetoric is trying to save face in the face of popular concerns.
On March 22, Modi, chairing a “high-level review meeting,” said the pandemic was “far from over” and directed authorities to step up genome sequencing of Covid-positive samples. He also emphasized that one must “guarantee the availability of the necessary medicines and logistics for flu and corona cases in the health facilities”. To do this, he urged the authorities to conduct “trial exercises” in hospitals to “ensure that our hospitals are ready”.
However, he did not pledge any additional funding for these health facilities. In reality, the Modi government has gone to great lengths to cut the national healthcare budget, which is already among the lowest in the world. At the same time, it has massively increased Indian military spending. In 2022, India’s military spending was the third largest in the world.
According to the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), the oldest and largest non-profit think tank on Indian economic policy, healthcare spending as a percentage of federal and state budgets in 2022-23 was 2.4 percent of GDP. This is a sharp drop from 3.6 percent in 2021-22. India’s health spending as a percentage of GDP is well below the average for the rest of the world and other developing countries.
And despite the recent surge in coronavirus infections and WHO concerns about the properties of XBB.1.16, the government is not enforcing mask requirements, school closures, or offering free mass testing to track and detect new infections. Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya used standard delaying tactics, urging states to identify hotspots and step up testing there so the wave will pre-empt protective measures. With a fast-spreading virus, an immediate and as broad a response as possible is crucial.
dr Randeep Guleria, the former director of the All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) in Delhi, ignored the government’s order “not to panic” and told India Today TV on April 17 that people should join in indoors poor ventilation and wearing masks in crowded public areas.
dr Supporting TV presenter Sneha Mordani’s comments that the current number of 10,000 cases per day is a “clear underestimate”, Guleria said: “We really underestimate the number of cases… It could be many times higher than what we have currently register because many people are not tested. We don’t really know how many people are positive.” He suggested expanding the testing to determine the “actual situation”. As media reports show, in India, a country of 1.4 billion people, only a tiny fraction are tested, about 200,000 a day.
dr Guleria also dismissed claims that there is no need to worry too much when there are mild cases: “As the number of cases increases, there is also a greater likelihood that the virus will continue to mutate, which could result in a new variant.”
He added that the rapid mutation of the virus means that the emergence of a new, deadlier mutation is possible, even likely: “I don’t think we can really predict how this virus will behave in the future.”
The Modi government’s indifference to the impact of Covid-19 on the people of India over the past three years should serve as a stark warning to the working class: they must not assume that the ruling elites will shield them and their families from the future danger of Covid -19 and other health disasters will protect.
2023-04-24 23:42:53
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