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How India and the world must respond to Covid-19 | Opinion
The impact of Covid-19 is being acutely experienced at the community, province and national levels. Governments have the primary responsibility. It is a time when we erect walls, fences and ensure border controls, but it is also a truly global existential crisis requiring a concerted global response, action and solidarity
The WhatsApp universe would have us believe that Nostradamus predicted the coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19) and that the authors Sylvia Browne and Lindsay Harrison, too, foresaw this in their book End of Days: Predictions and Prophecies about the End of the World.
In a life-imitating-fiction moment, people are amazed at how prescient Steven Soderberg’s 2011 masterly science fiction film, Contagion, foreshadowed just such a pandemic with wide-ranging effects. That Dr Lipkins, the virologist consultant for the film tested positive for Covid-19 adds to an eerie feeling about the virus’ surreal reach and power across time and space.
Foretold or not, the scale, scope and rapid spread of Covid-19 has taken the world by surprise and caused a tectonic shock to global public health, economy and society. The United Nations called it the most challenging crisis since World War II.
Our deepest fears about individual and collective vulnerability and the mortality of the human race itself in the face of this highly-contagious pandemic have been stoked. This is especially because there is no immediate vaccine or proven cure yet.
Theories about whether it was a spontaneous, accidental or deliberately perpetrated outbreak, and about the origin of the virus from animal-to-human being a blow back from nature are abound. We may perhaps never find out, but we must learn lessons. The need for a truly global, empowered and effective bio-surveillance and forewarning mechanism to prevent, detect and track viruses at inception within countries for the global public good has been underlined.
The biggest dilemma in shaping and executing public policy to contain the pandemic is to banish an apocalyptic sense of doom and gloom. At the same time, a morale-raising message about the seriousness of the pandemic and the do-or-die socioeconomic choices people need to make to win the war against Covid-19 need to be conveyed. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has managed to do just that with the media playing a largely positive role.
The coronavirus outbreak began in China and gripped its Hubei province of 60 million people and Wuhan, its glittering capital, in December 2019. It then spread as a global pandemic to 163 countries in all continents with nearly 858,000 infected and over 40,000 dead, and counting.
It went on to affect the rest of Asia and particularly affected Europe and the United States. The latter is now the country with the highest number of cases and fatalities, outstripping China .
It is being reported that after being secretive and in an initial state of denial about gravity of the outbreak, China moved to curb its spread within China with iron-curtain efficacy, military ruthlessness and logistical prowess. It has now declared that it has flattened the curve with only a few new cases and deaths. A video of the Governor of Wuhan claims it as a victory of the Chinese system of discipline and control over people‘s behaviour.
While it is comforting that China, the original epicentre of the virus, has been able to flatten the curve, it owes the world some answers . How did China reach the present stage? What lessons were learnt? How did Chinese authorities manage to lock off huge parts of the country affecting 800 million people? And now, how are they opening up Wuhan once again domestically and internationally? Equally important: How are they using pharmaceutical and virological knowledge and capital to find and share data, a possible cure and vaccine with the rest of the world?
Can democracies — developed countries like those in Europe and North America and a large, developing, densely-populated country of 1.3 billion like India with a federal polity, socioeconomic and cultural complexity and plurality — discipline their populations into complying with social distancing norms to flatten and bend the curve? As the Nizamuddin case shows, one dereliction can trigger a cluster contagion and be one too many.
Countries like India have mounted unprecedented and comprehensive prevention, transmission control, mitigation and response efforts. It has forced the government to impose a total lockdown affecting 1.3 billion people. This is a truly staggering, but necessary, response.Transformational behaviour change is the key to success.
The impact of Covid-19 is being acutely experienced at the community, province and national levels. Governments have the primary responsibility. It is a time when we erect walls, fences and ensure border controls, but it is also a truly global existential crisis requiring a concerted global response, action and solidarity. The World Health Organization and the United Nations along with all countries must work to make sure that end-of-the-world prophesies about the pandemic do not come to pass.
Lakshmi Puri is a former assistant secretary general, United Nations, former deputy executive director of UN Women and former acting deputy secretary general of UNCTAD. This is the first of a series of three articles by the writer.
The views expressed are personal
