India’s nightmarish second wave of Covid-19 finally seems to be ebbing, but the pandemic’s scars won’t be easily erased.
Other developing nations must learn from India’s experience if they don’t want to repeat it trib.al/0Hg2tAH
The first and most obvious lesson is to avoid overconfidence.
A relatively small change in how transmissible the coronavirus is can have large, non-linear effects on how fast it spreads trib.al/ksUhHUJ
Strategies that kept the Covid-19 pandemic at bay in 2020 won’t necessarily work in 2021.
As new variants emerge, health authorities might need to lock down more firmly and in a more targeted fashion to remain safe trib.al/ksUhHUJ
Health authorities need to test more widely and perform more genomic sequencing so that they can track which variants are spreading in the population and where trib.al/ksUhHUJ
Richer nations should help. A recent paper points out that there are significant legal barriers to sharing of samples and data internationally.
These need to be addressed so virus samples can move across borders quickly bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
Emerging nations need to learn the right lessons about limited healthcare capacity.
The tragic scramble in cities such as Delhi for hospital beds, oxygen cylinders and medicines need not be replicated elsewhere trib.al/ksUhHUJ
Indian states that established triage systems managed the pressure on their creaky public health machinery better than others.
Local authorities should make plans to set up similar systems in their countries, including by phone and online bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
Doctors now have a wealth of data about which therapeutic treatments are most effective, and which aren’t.
➡️Patients’ families spent nights trying to get hold of convalescent plasma when it was ineffective
➡️High-flow oxygen therapy was overused trib.al/ksUhHUJ
Governments now know that when:
➡️The curve starts steepening
➡️A new variant is detected
➡️Test positivity rises above danger levels
They should swiftly establish a centralized task force to allocate hospital resources and prescribe the right therapies trib.al/ksUhHUJ
All nations should now understand that Covid-19 vaccines work and that interfering with their supply is dangerous.
The Indian government argued that “if just one country shuts down raw material production, the entire supply chain breaks down” trib.al/ksUhHUJ
International cooperation over the next weeks and months must focus on ensuring that:
➡️The Covid-19 vaccine supply chain is repaired
➡️Export bans end
➡️More manufacturing capacity is created
➡️The existing stock of vaccines is shared more equitably trib.al/ksUhHUJ
What happened in India could happen anywhere.
But it need not if India’s government, its peers in the emerging world and the world’s richer nations learn the right lessons, work together — and show a little humility about Covid-19 trib.al/ksUhHUJ
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