The Callousness of India’s COVID-19 Response – By Vidya Krishnan
India now has several hundred confirmed cases of the coronavirus, yet the government’s response has been anything but. The lockdown may help “flatten the curve” and buy the authorities some time, but that means little if they do not take advantage by aggressively testing, isolating confirmed cases, and performing contact tracing. Absent these measures, the lockdown will merely create concentrated pockets of outbreaks that will then expand rapidly once the restrictions are eventually lifted.
During his first televised address to the nation on the pandemic – unlike leaders in other democratic countries, he has not given regular press conferences – Modi compared the effort to contain COVID-19 to the Great Wars, and asked citizens to perform their duties, without explaining what his government was doing.
Ramanan Laxminarayan, an epidemiologist and lecturer at Princeton University, used a different analogy. “Imagine that you’re standing on the shore and you’re watching the tsunami come in,” he told the BBC. “If you are going to just stand there, and watch the tsunami, you are finished. If you can run as fast as you can, you have a better chance.” India is not running fast enough.
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Desperate to go home, Indian migrant workers face tough choice amid world’s largest lockdown – By Priyali Sur and Ben Westcott (Mar 28, 2020, CNN)
Coronavirus Threatens Catastrophe in India – By Vidya Krishnan (Mar 25, 2020, Foreign Affairs)
India faces up to potential coronavirus crisis, but is the country really prepared for a 21 day lockdown? – By Julia Hollingsworth, Manveena Suri and Swati Gupta (Mar 25, 2020, CNN)
Coronavirus: India’s pandemic lockdown turns into a human tragedy – By Soutik Biswas (Mar 30, 2020, BBC)
