Does India really have a handle on the coronavirus, after all the dire predictions?

While the country remains the second-worst-affected nation in terms of absolute infection numbers, its new cases per capita have slowed to well below the US and Britain

A year after its first reported case, some hospitals in New Delhi have no Covid-19 patients, and normality is prevailing – though Kerala and Maharashtra states are battling a surge

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Indian commuters crowd the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus in Mumbai, India, on February 1. Photo: AP

Published: 11:00am, 2 Feb 2021Updated: 11:03am, 2 Feb 2021

Just days after India marked a year since its first reported Covid-19 case, the country seems to be hurtling into the light after a long spell inside a dark tunnel. Some hospitals in the capital, New Delhi, have no coronavirus patients. Markets are full of masked shoppers. People meet in cafes and restaurants, at tables set a cautious distance apart. The more risk-averse socialise outdoors, on their terraces and balconies.

Students are returning in batches to universities, and some classes in schools have begun again. Cinemas, with protocols in place, reopened on Monday at full capacity. Wedding planners, hung out to dry for a year, have swung back into action. Flights to most parts of the country are full.

Across the country, there is a prevailing and unmistakable feeling of normality. The figures say it all – the peak of the pandemic was from September 14-20, when the country recorded its highest weekly death toll of 8,175 deaths, but the last week of January saw the weekly death toll fall to fewer than 1,000.

On Sunday, India registered some 11,000 fresh cases in 24 hours. According to the Health Ministry, no case has been reported in 146 of the 739 districts for more than a week.

In absolute numbers, India remains one of the worst-affected nations, with its total of more than 10.76 million Covid-19 cases placing it second only to the United States. But given its population of 1.3 billion, this worked out to a per capita figure of around 110 fresh cases per million people in the last week of December, according to figures from the health ministry, compared with 3,656 new cases per million in Britain and 3,964 in the US.

“With caution, I would say that the pandemic is under control,” said Professor Dileep Mavalankar, director of the Indian Institute of Public Health in Gandhinagar, the state capital of Gujarat. “It is now restricted to a few areas. Out of over 700 districts, 50 account for 60 per cent of cases and deaths, so it is on the way out, but its distribution is very uneven.”

Students in Hyderabad gather after schools reopened nearly 10 months after the spread of Covid-19. Photo: AFP

For those Indians who were irrationally and unscientifically unconcerned with the coronavirus, even as it wreaked havoc and death across the world, the latest figures are seen as a sort of vindication.

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