But the picture changed drastically when India began recording a dramatic increase in new cases from April 15 onward, with more than 200,000 cases daily now hospitals are running out of oxygen. It also exported around 193 million doses of vaccines. India had increased its oxygen exports to other countries by a whopping 734 percent in January 2021. In March, a few weeks before the new surge, Indian health minister and physician Harsh Vardhan asserted that India was in the “ endgame” of the COVID-19 pandemic, justifying his government’s decision to export medical resources to other countries. “We kept warning that the pandemic was not over but no one was listening,” says Rakesh Mishra, senior principal scientist and director of the Hyderabad-based Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology, who is currently investigating whether a new homegrown variant-B.1.617-is behind India’s second surge.Īfter the first wave, Mishra says, the healthcare system moved on to tackle other medical emergencies that were neglected during the first wave, and dedicated COVID-19 facilities were converted back to their previous functions. But “there were still a fairly large proportion of people in the big cities, but also in smaller cities and villages, who were not exposed to the virus last year, who were susceptible.”Īs cases declined from September 2020 to mid-February 2021, the Indian government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ignored warnings of a second wave, despite the fact that new variants were identified as far back as in January, according to media reports. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India. "We completely let down our guard and assumed in January that the pandemic was over-and COVID surveillance and control took a back seat,” says K.
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