Penn Today: India’s Covid Crisis

By the end of March 2021, the line graph of India’s confirmed COVID cases took a sharp skyward turn. The country is currently averaging more than 350,000 new cases per day in what “has been quite a perplexing issue for many folks who have been studying the pandemic,” says Harsha Thirumurthy, associate professor of medical ethics and health policy at the Perelman School of Medicine. “We don’t know which hypotheses best explain this really dramatic second wave,” but it is most likely attributable to a combination of factors, he says. “The first problem was that there was kind of this early triumphalism by Modi and the BJP that perhaps misread the initial policy actions and how effective they were,” Thachil says. As the first wave began to subside, India began to relax its national and local lockdowns, and the economy began to open up without a corresponding focus on crisis preparation, he says. Read more at Penn Today.