分类： bharat

This is a question that has mutated right in front of our eyes, almost as if to mock us. It was in the air, minus the ‘not’, all of spring and early summer, tremulously asked, and perhaps frequently (and prematurely) presumed to have an answer in the affirmative. A sense that the virus was somehow less virulent here; that if there was a specific India story to Covid, purely epidemiologically speaking, it was that we were speaking of a more modest dystopia. Merely a stronger version of a passing flu. The data curve was such that it could help foster that impression.

It was around three months ago, in March, that the COVID-19 season properly began in India. Soon, the dizzying spiral in Italy had gripped the world’s att­ention. Then, within days, that graph was replicating itself in the US. Naturally, the spectre of Covid effortlessly conquering new territories evoked fears.

But even by April, India’s statistics were now­here near the worst-case scenario. The question naturally arose: was there something at work besides a stringent lockdown?

Nearly every possibility was speculated upon—perhaps the virus was behaving differently here, maybe it was a milder ‘strain’. Maybe there were different ‘strains’ in India itself….one thing in Gujarat, ano­ther in Gurgaon. The questions were not surprising: we knew little of the novel coronavirus, except that it was beset by signs of seemingly inexplicable randomness. So how do we begin to put the pieces of the puzzle together? We put the question to various experts.

A 4-month-old baby recovered from Covid-19 after being on ventilator for as many as 18 days in Andhra Pradesh’s Visakhapatnam.

The baby was discharged on Friday evening after a health check-up, media reports said.

The toddler was tested positive for Covid-19 after her mother, a tribal woman from East Godavari, was infected with the virus in May.

Thereafter, the toddler was shifted to Visakhapatnam VIMS Hospital on May 25.

“She was put on ventilator for 18 days and was discharged from VIMS hospital on Friday after testing negative,” Vinay Chand, Visakhapatnam’s district collector said.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, Andhra Pradesh reported 222 new Covid-19 cases, including 2 deaths.

This one executive decision was deemed at first to be a no-brainer. Perhaps a faint dread preceded it, blended with a resigned sense of inevitability—as if for an elemental event beyond our control, the way we may anticipate news of a solar eclipse sweeping the land that would offer no clear promise of when the sun would shine again. Still, for a country blessed with frighteningly fractious opinions on everything, there had been near-unanimity on this. No political party, no social segment, no corporate lobby, nor even any healthcare expert had offered a serious objection. Stunningly simple at one level, it was also profound in the way it straitened our primary conditions of living. Poets, historians and sociologists will have their say another day. But the immediate, practical question is: did it work? As Week 9, 10 and 11 of the lockdown saw public transport and air travel thaw out messily from a freeze—as India daily counts a new crest in numbers, and balks at counting the social and economic costs of internal migration on a never-before scale—one prediction can be safely made. This question will be hotly debated even months from now, in ever-new forms. Questions proper to governance in the socio-economic realm cannot really be delinked from the growth path of an epidemic—they are connected inextricably. But they are also subject to opinions beyond the scope of medicine proper. The original question still stands: was the lockdown effective in controlling the India story of COVID-19?