The ongoing 21-day nationwide lockdown to check the spread of COVID-19 is likely to — and should — continue, according to a top doctor, who said India was not prepared to handle a pandemic.
“It’s not as if there’s going to be a carnival once the 21-day period ends. From what I gather during the discussions we are having, limited lockdowns will continue even after that because the virus will still be in circulation,” Arindam Kar, general secretary of the Indian Society of Critical Care Medicine, told The Hindu .
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“ There are only about 30,000 ventilators in the whole of India. Even if 10% of population is infected, and of them even if 2% have to be placed under critical care, we will need close to 3 lakh ventilators, which we don’t have,” Dr. Kar said.
Another matter of grave concern, he emphasised, is the possibility of hospitals running out of protective gear for their staff, which is a big likelihood in case the infection spreads. “The morale of the healthcare workers will plunge and that’s when there will be real panic,” he said.
Rahul Jain, internal medicine specialist at Belle Vue Clinic, one of Kolkata’s top hospitals, agreed on this. “Even if one doctor or nurse is down, there will be a spiralling affect on 50 to 100 patients, which we cannot afford,” he said. “Having said that, we need to fight the disease with the resources we have at our disposal — there is no point saying at this moment that we should have had this facility or that facility.”
West Bengal govt lauded
Dr. Jain lauded the efforts of the West Bengal government in taking precautionary measures, which include converting the Calcutta Medical College into a 3,000-bed facility to cope with a major outbreak. He did not rule out such an outbreak; according to him, the relatively less number of cases in India was only the “lull before the storm”, and that a lockdown was the only way to contain the “geometrical increment” in the spread of the virus.
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Dr. Kar, who also heads critical care at Calcutta Medical Research Institute, is being optimistic about summer. “The virus needs certain levels of humidity to proliferate, and we are hoping it will [become less effective] in the heat. Also, the virus eventually adapts to the host and its virulence reduces. Moreover, it is constantly mutating and changing its characteristics and can lose its potency. At the moment, we can only be optimistic about these things. All I can say is we are hoping for the best but prepared for the worst,” he said.
Dr. Kar predicts a massive investment in health infrastructure and massive overhaul in the pharmaceutical sector once the storm blows over. “As of now, 80% of raw material for our drugs comes from China. Companies will want to come out of this dependence. Also, remote healthcare will gain popularity — that is, more and more people will receive healthcare digitally with minimum human intervention,” he said.
