Air ambulance flight by Jetserv Aviation had an accident
What can be worse than patients dying due to a lack of ventilators? As it turns out, the unavailability of ventilators is not really the worst thing. It is the stories of unused ventilators that are. Unfortunately, lying about in different numbers all across the country.
Even as the Government of India clarifies that no oxygen concentrators are lying pending at the customs warehouse, the constantly disturbing reports of unused, unopened ventilators lying in several parts of the country continue.
Non-invasive ventilation uses face masks, nasal masks or mouthpieces[Stephane Mahe/Reuters]
India s COVID crisis: A deadly example of government failure
Independent Australia
05 May 2021, 16:52 GMT+10
The devastating outbreak across India exposes the stark failures in governance and vaccine development locally and across the world, writes Dr Rashad Seedeen.
THE ONGOING CRISIS of COVID-19 has exposed the abject failure in strong-men governments and neoliberalism.
India, a Government led by Hindu-nationalist Narendra Modi, has recently reported the highest daily total of COVID-19 cases at 401,933. This was reported after ten days of over 300,000 of new daily cases.
As author Arundhati Roynoted, only a few months earlier at the World Economic Forum, Modi smugly declared that:
Vaccine rollout continues
As of yesterday evening local time, 154,854,096 vaccine doses had been administered.
A total of 27,889,889 people had received their second doses equal to 2.1 per cent of India s population of 1.3 billion people, according to a health ministry news release.
This figure is significantly lower than the United States, where 29.8 per cent of the population are fully immunised.
India launched its vaccination drive on January 16, and expanded the program to everyone above the age of 18 from today.
However, a number of states are warning they have no shots to give.
A health worker wearing protective gear collects a nasal swab sample of an election counting agent to test for the COVID-19 at Siliguri college counting centre in Siliguri.(Diptendu Dutta/AFP/Getty Images)
The St Kitts Nevis Observer
Guardian (UK)
They will be remembered as India’s lost months: the stretch between September and February when Covid-19 cases in the country defied global trends, falling sharply throughout the coldest months of the year until they reached four-figure daily totals.
It was inexplicable. Was it the Indian climate? A protection conferred by childhood immunisations? Some speculated India may have naturally reached herd immunity. It was a tantalising idea that took hold in India’s highest circles of policymaking, media and science – even a government-commissioned study suggested herd immunity may indeed have been achieved. It would prove one of the most fatal miscalculations of the Covid-19 pandemic so far.