Kedar Mishra
We were told in March that if we were to stay at home, COVID-19 would not be able to touch us. We heard a lot of stories when the Prime minister called for Janta curfew on March 22nd. They told us,”If we confine ourselves in home for a day and bang the utensils for five minutes at five in the evening, Corona virus will no longer be in the country.” I remember a viral video of that time. A line of fire jumping from one matches stick to other but the continuity of the fire was stopped as a one stick broke the row. We endured all the suffering with one hope that the chain of Corona contagion would break down. We locked ourselves down for months. Many of us were beaten by the police for our innocent outings. Our workers and daily wage laborers walked thousands of miles back home. However, we remained silent, as we were hopeful that our country would survive the onslaught of COVID-19. How much did we lose for this hope? Millions lost their jobs. Millions suffered on the road. Many of them died in road and in special trains.
After Three months of suffering, let’s ask ourselves, where are we now in the war against COVID-19? In March, when we followed the strictest rules, we had only 137 infections and 35 deaths. From April 1 to June 23, the number of infections reached to four and a half Lakhs in these eighty four days. The death toll is more than 14,200. This means that in the last eighty four days, 180 Indians have died daily due toCOVID-19. An average of 5,300 new cases is being diagnosed in the country every day. Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi, the country’s three largest metropolitan cities, have the highest number of deaths. The COVID-19 situation in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Delhi is extremely serious. Testing and treatment of Corona victims in Delhi is now talk of the country. The political tensions between the central and state governments and powerful private hospital lobby in the capital makes the city a death trap for ordinary Delhites.
With time people has taken the virus as their predefined fate. How long will people live in fear of it? People are now forced to accept Corona as their destiny. At one point, the Indian government said, “We are better than European countries.” But there is no point in saying that today. We are the fourth most infected country in the world after the United States, Brazil and Russia. “Our position in Asia is number one. We are ranked eighth in the world in terms of COVID-19 death. (US-122,000, Brazil-51,000, England-42,000, Italy-34,000, France-24,000, Spain-27,000, Mexico-22,000, India-18,000 )While infections are now on the decline in European countries, they are on the rise in India and we don’t exactly know when we will reach the peak!
Public health Experts have repeatedly called for a special strategy for all states in which mortality rate is very high. The states with mortality rates of more than 3% were Gujarat-6.04%, Maharashtra-4.63%, Madhya Pradesh -4.31%, West Bengal-3.94%, Delhi-3.45% and Uttar Pradesh-3.11. Special attention and strategy should be there for these high mortal clusters.
With passing time, however, we have begun to think of COVI-19 death as normal numbers. The fate of common man in India is thrown into uncertainties and deep darkness.
