ABSTRACT
Despite the commonality of loss of lives, every pandemic has played a role in shaping the socio-economic and public health outcomes depending on the nature and the magnitude of the outbreak. In this study, we have attempted to make a preliminary assessment of COVID-19 impact on India and commented on the country’s resilience, response, impact and draw the lessons for the future. Although lockdown was necessary to stop the transmission, is showing and will show a greater impact on all spheres of human life considering the country’s poor resilient socio-economic institutions. Our concurrent assessment in the middle of the outbreak predicts that the socio-economic, demographic and health costs in India would be much higher than developed countries. Initiation of timely action from the very beginning (when the first case reported in Kerala) could have plummeted the potential transmission in every corner of the country to a large extent and could have avoided socio-economic crises that presently surfaced in the country. The study provides a strong message for initiating sector specific measures alongside relief packages to reduce the damage not only for now but also to build a resilient system for socioeconomically vulnerable groups, health care services, and education infrastructure to face future pandemics. Otherwise, the pandemic like this can cost more.
Subject(s)
COVID-19ABSTRACT
Background and Rationale: Amid SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, the low number of infections for a population size of 1.38 billion is widely discussed, but with no definite answers. Methods: We used the model proposed by Bommer and Vollmer to assess the quality of official case records. The infection fatality rates were taken from Verity et al (2020). Age distribution of the population for India and states are taken from the Census of India (2011). Reported number of deaths and SARS-CoV-2 confirmed cases from https://www.covid19india.org. The reported numbers of samples tests were collected from the reports of the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR). Results: The findings suggest that India is detecting just 3.6% of the total number of infections with a huge variation across its states. Among 13 states which have more than 100 COVID-19 cases, the detection rate varies from 81.9% (of 410 estimated infections) in Kerala to 0.8% (of 35487 estimated infections) in Madhya Pradesh and 2.4% (of 7431 estimated infections) in Gujarat. Conclusion: As the study reports a lower number of deaths and higher recovery rates in the states with a high detection rate, thus suggest that India must enhance its testing capacity and go for widespread testing. Late detection puts patients in greater need of mechanical ventilation and ICU care, which imposes greater costs on the health system. The country should also adopt population-level random testing to assess the prevalence of the infection.