How India’s COVID-19 Crisis Spiraled Out of Control
The crematoriums have been left burning so long that some of their metal components have started to melt. People who cannot breathe are being turned away from hospitals that have no capacity to take them in. Health workers have been left without personal protective equipment, putting them at grave risk as they try to care for the sick.
“We feel so angry,” says Kanchan Pandey, a community health worker in Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh. “At least give us some masks and gloves. Is there no value to our lives?”
Those are the scenes playing out in India, where the world’s current worst coronavirus fire is raging out of control. As my colleague Naina Bajekal reports, the numbers are terrifying: More than 18 million people have been diagnosed with COVID-19; more than 200,000 have died; and more than 3,000 others are dying every day—and those are just the official counts. The true daily death toll might be twice as high and the official caseload may be only a tenth of what it actually is, experts say, due to spotty reporting from across the sprawling country of 1.4 billion people.
This is in a place that as recently as early spring was still being hailed as a model for other nations battling the virus. A lockdown from March to June of last year was said to have contained the pandemic in India, and daily case counts have been low there since. There was even talk that India had reached a natural level of herd immunity.
This led to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s being hailed by his own ruling party for his “visionary leadership.” Modi furthered the narrative, going so far as to hold mass rallies this past March ahead of elections. But in that same month, says Dr. Ashish Jha, dean at Brown University School of Public Health, “we had red lights flashing,” as the virus mounted the assault it has now sprung on a country that was busy conducting itself as if the plague had passed it by.
“It’s equal parts complacency and incompetence,” says Sumit Chanda, an infectious-disease expert at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in California. Add to that the emergence of new viral variants; the common practice in India of multi-generational families sharing a household, where the virus is easily passed from person to person; and chronic underfunding of the country’s health care system.
The short-term outlook for India is dire. The U.S. and other countries are now airlifting in aid, but the country faces the daunting prospect of vaccinating over 1 billion people. So far, only 2% of India’s population has been vaccinated. The challenge of vaccinating enough residents to confer herd immunity is so great that for now at least the best approach might be localized vaccines in national hot spots with the hope of at least mitigating the harm. India is a cautionary tale—one that the rest of the world ignores at its peril.
About 302 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to various U.S. states as of yesterday afternoon, of which about 235 million doses have been administered thus far, according to TIME's vaccine tracker. About 29.5% of Americans had been completely vaccinated.
Congo is planning to return 1.3 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to COVAX—the body that distributes vaccines to low- and middle-income countries, reports the Associated Press. Congo has by no means vaccinated its entire 87 million people—quite the opposite: Vaccine hesitancy has led to doses are going unused, so rather than holding on to them until they expire, Congo is seeking to have them redistributed to countries that can put them to use. John Nkengasong, director of the African Centers for Disease Control has asked the rest of Africa to follow Congo’s lead if their vaccines are going to waste.
With safety concerns over the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson-Janssen vaccines disrupting supply chains, Moderna is working to fill the gap, developing and now testing a formulation of its mRNA vaccine that doesn’t need to be frozen, but instead can be kept merely refrigerated for up to three months, as my colleague Alice Park reports. The new version, if successful, would be of particular benefit in developing countries that don’t have the freezer capabilities to prevent the shots from spoiling.
At the same time, Moderna is planning to more than triple its vaccine output in 2022, in the hope of keeping up with what it anticipates will be rising global demand, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company is aiming to produce as many as three billion doses next year, up from a minimum projected capacity of 800 million this year.
Throwing the need for Moderna’s move into relief, The New York Timesreports that vaccine supply is running up to six months behind demand in some places in India. Demand will only grow as the country prepares to make anyone 18 and older eligible for shots.
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
The Global Situation
More than 149.6 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 1 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 3.1 million people have died. On April 28, there were 905,992 new cases and 15,719 new deaths confirmed globally.
Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
And here is every country with over 2.5 million confirmed cases:
With the summer travel season approaching, the European Union announced yesterday that the European Parliament had voted to approve the issuance of travel certificates to E.U. residents, allowing them to move freely across borders within the continent if they can prove they have been vaccinated, have recovered from COVID-19, or have a current negative test, according to the Associated Press. The measure, however, is already receiving pushback from member states that want the leeway to impose their own travel rules. Europe expects to have 70% of its adult population fully vaccinated by the end of summer.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy in India yesterday issued a directive urging all Americans not to travel to the country, and those who are there already “to leave as soon as it is safe to do so.” The Embassy cited a Level 4 Travel Notice posted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control—which declares, “Travelers should avoid all travel to India”—and a similar Level 4 Travel Advisory from the State Department. The directive from the Embassy adds the warning that, “Access to all types of medical care is becoming severely limited in India.”
A new study in Mexico has shown that as much as 33.5% of the country’s population may have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 as early as February of 2020, the Associated Press reports. Investigators arrived at their findings by studying year-old blood samples. Geography made a difference in virus penetrance, with areas along the U.S.-Mexico border having higher rates of infection.
The Situation in the U.S.
The U.S. had recorded more than 32.2 million coronavirus cases as of 1 a.m. E.T. today. More than 574,000 people have died. On April 28, there were 55,125 new cases and 959 new deaths confirmed in the U.S.
Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
The U.S. Department of Commerce announced today that the country's GDP rose 1.6% in the first quarter of 2021 compared to the previous quarter, for a projected increase of 6.4% compared to 2020 as a whole. Stimulus checks, the increasing rollout of vaccines and the steady lifting of restrictions are all contributing to the improvement, the New York Timesreports.
Through the first half of April, Michigan experienced one of the worst surges in case rates in the U.S. But recently, lockdown measures enacted in the state seem to have made a positive impact, and earlier today, Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced she will progressively ease some social distancing and masking rules as four vaccination goals she had set have been met, according to Click On Detroit. After 55% of Michiganders are vaccinated, in-person work will be allowed for all businesses; at 60%, indoor capacity at banquet halls, stadiums, funeral homes and more will be increased to 25%; at 65% vaccination levels, all restrictions on capacity at indoor venues will be lifted; at 70%, face mask orders will be lifted.
After months as a viral hot-spot, California has experienced a stunning turnaround, with the state now posting the lowest per-capita COVID-19 rate in the nation, reports the Los Angeles Times, citing CDC numbers. As of yesterday, California’s rate was recording less than 33 cases per 100,000 people. Hawaii was second, at 36.8; overall, the national case rate is 114.7.
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of April 29, 1 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
Unmasking in the Capitol
President Biden’s speech to a joint session of Congress might have sent the wrong message, writes former Baltimore Health Commissioner Leana Wen, in The Washington Post. The tableau of a socially distanced speech with some lawmakers double-masked could reduce confidence in the effectiveness of vaccines, Wen argues. Read more here.
An Uneven Economic Recovery
As the U.S. economy comes roaring back overall, some sectors are not keeping pace, warns the New York Times, leading to the risk of two different economies moving at two different speeds. Transportation services, food and accommodations, and the entertainment sectors, for example are all lagging, as recreational goods, information processing and durable goods all race ahead. Read more here.
Breast Milk is Not a Vaccine
A growing—and misguided—belief that the breast milk of vaccinated women can effectively immunize their babies is leading to the risk that social distancing rules will not be heeded and babies will get sick, warns a piece in New York magazine. Read more here.
Don’t Wait For Herd Immunity
Vaccine resistance may make it impossible for the U.S. to reach the level of inoculation needed to keep the virus from spreading. That, argues Juliette Kayyem in the Atlantic, means it’s time to consider a plan B: minimizing risk, instead of trying to eliminate it. Read more here.
The Math May Be on Our Side
We’re plenty familiar with the exponential growth of a pandemic—the way one infection can explode outward, with cases doubling every few days. Happily, the opposite math is also true, writes Zoë M. McLaren in the New York Times. Read more here.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com. If you have specific questions you'd like us to answer, please send them to covidquestions@time.com.
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Today's newsletter was written by Jeffrey Kluger and edited by Elijah Wolfson.
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