India may witness 1,750 coronavirus-related deaths per day, surging to around 2,320 daily by the first week of June while in financial terms, the country may need to expend over $7.8 billion on testing and $1.7 billion on healthcare usage because of infections by September 2021, according to a report of the Lancet Covid-19 Commission by India Task Force members.
The report, titled “Managing India’s second COVID-19 wave: Urgent steps”, underlines the key elements of the second COVID-19 wave. It also suggests measures like ramping up vaccine production, vaccination to the needy, quarantine and ban on assembly of groups of over 10 that should be taken to help mitigate the spread of infection.
As per the preliminary review of the report, “while the pandemic has spread, the geographic contours of the second wave closely mirror those of the first wave, though with a deeper penetration into tier-2 and tier-3 cities.” The study also indicates that the second wave has been more geographically bundled so far.
The tally of districts constituting the top 50% of the cases has fallen from over 40 at the time of the first peak to less than 20 presently, it said pointing out that at the time of the first surge of the novel coronavirus cases during August-September 2020, the count of districts contributing to 75% of the total COVID-19 cases was 60-100, whereas it has been approx. 20-40 districts during the second wave. It took 40 days to go from 10K-80K in COVID-19 second wave
The second wave is unlike the first in two significant ways. Firstly, the rate of increase in fresh coronavirus cases is substantially higher. Secondly, more coronavirus cases are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, causing relatively low rates of hospitalisation and mortality.
The overall Case Fatality Ratio (CFR) since the outset of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020 has been reported to be around 1.3%. The CFR among Covid-19 patients who have contracted the infection since the beginning of 2021 is considerably less at 0.87%.
The report also recommended solutions such as vaccination including all adults, comprising those below 45, with severe comorbidities into the priority group, enhancing jab production, widening jab basket including Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson besides addressing vaccine hesitancy.
The report also doesn’t propose a blanket national or state lockdown. Indicating that economic closures are most disruptive to the poorest sections of society, it proposes a middle-ground approach in India, comprising phased, localised closures or curbs.