India’s COVID Martyrs

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In India on May 16, 2021 fifty doctors died in a single day. 269 doctors have died in the second wave of the virus in India. Last year, 736 doctors had lost their lives during the first wave. The highest number of fatalities have been reported from Bihar (69) followed by Uttar Pradesh (34) and Delhi (27). Only 3% of the doctors who died were fully vaccinated.

Five months into India’s vaccination drive, only 66 per cent of India’s healthcare workers have been fully vaccinated.

Dr. Jayesh Lele, the General Secretary of The Indian Medical Association, (IMA), told NDTV, “It is very unfortunate that we lost 50 doctors yesterday across India and 244 in the second wave since the first week of April”.

“Secondly we want to highlight that doctors are understaffed and overworked. They sometimes work for 48 hours at a stretch without any rest. This adds to the viral load and they ultimately succumb to the infection. The government needs to take measures to boost the healthcare workforce,” he added.

While the The Indian Medical Association (IMA) says that a thousand doctors have died due to Covid so far, the actual numbers may be far higher. The IMA only keeps a record of its nearly 350,000 members. India, however, has more than 1 million 200 thousand doctors. The former president of IMA, Dr. K.K. Aggarwal died on May 17, 2021 from COVID-19. The doctor was infected despite being vaccinated.

Doctors and nurses who are on the front line of the battle against the virus are being stigmatized in India. There are cases of doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals, being shunned by others for fear of being infected. This includes the threat of being evicted from their own apartments and general ostracism. People are frightened and superstitious. “They recognize us with our lab coats and stethoscopes. Many doctors have been asked to vacate their rented homes by their landlords as they believe that doctors staying at their houses may make them more susceptible to Covid-19,” a junior doctor at Hyderabad’s MGM Hospital told The New Indian Express newspaper on condition of anonymity.

 

 

400 Children 10 days

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More children are getting infected by COVID-19 i the second wave than in the first wave in India. There was a 51 per cent rise in infection among children within a period of a month in the state of Maharashtra India. As many as 1,34,470 children as young as 10 years have been infected versus 88,827 on April 3, 2021. More than 75,387 children were infected within 25 days in the state.

400 children under the age of 10 have been infected by COVID-19 Mumbai India the last 10 days.

Over 470 children below the age of 10 have been infected with COVID-19, since the beginning of this month in Bengaluru, as the city is witnessing a spike in infections.

According to some experts, unlike in the past children are now vulnerable because they are more exposed to outdoor activities, functions and gatherings, as also schools reopening for a certain age group, which was not the case earlier due to lock downs. Along with the serious health impacts, UNICEF warns that children are facing a multitude of physical, mental, social and economic risks. UNICEF representative in India, Yasmin Ali Haque, says children are losing parents and caregivers to the virus. This is leaving many destitute and without anyone to care for them.

At least 706 government school teachers and other employees have died of coronavirus due to poll duties during the Uttar Pradesh panchayat elections, alleges the state-level teachers’ association. The minister of state for basic education, Satish Chandra Dwivedi reacted to the allegation of teachers’ deaths saying, “There’s no specific audit done by basic education department about the number of teachers’ death. It is wrong to say all those who were engaged in election duty died due to Covid. How do we know that teachers were not infected when they came for election duty? And how does anyone know that teachers, after returning from the election duty, got infected for some other reasons?” This response is typical of government officials to deflect and blame. The vaccine roll out has been deathly slow in India.

Children make up 22% of new U.S. COVID-19 Cases in the United States and account for about 3.1% of hospitalizations. As more and more adults continue to get their COVID-19 shots, infection rates are slowly falling. Dr. Grace Lee, a pediatric epidemiologist at Stanford Children’s Health said if vaccines are approved for children, those infection rates would also likely plummet.