August 10, 2026

Second Wave: There Is No Denying That We Were Totally Unprepared

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2021-05-12 06:08:18

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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack

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The world is now increasingly acknowledging what most observers in India have been saying for a long time that throwing caution to the winds and getting into a self-congratulatory mode too early after the first wave has meant that India was caught totally unprepared by the severity and ferociousness of the second wave. Dr Antony Fauci, Director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and chief medical advisor to US President Joe Biden told the US Senate committee hearing on the Covid situation worldwide that "the reason that India is in such dire straits now is that they had an original surge and made the incorrect assumption that they were finished with it, and what happened, they opened up prematurely and wind up having a surge right now that we're all very well aware of is extremely devastating."

Instead of acknowledging its mistakes and taking corrective action, the government seems to be in denial and has adopted a combative (as usual?) mode. It has taken to rebut articles in foreign newspapers assessing the Covid situation in India by saying that they were wrong. But do images lie? Do reports in India media about shortages of testing kits, hospital beds, oxygen cylinders, concentrators, Covid drugs and most importantly, vaccines, all fake? Are people not dying in hospitals across India due to oxygen shortage? Are social media cries for help part of a design to embarrass and humiliate the government? Are the unending lines at crematoriums and bodies floating in the Ganga part of the wrong assessment?

The fact is that the government made an "incorrect assumption" about having won the war against the virus despite knowing that second, third and even fourth waves had hit Europe and the US and will certainly hit India in due course. All our Covid facilities, built urgently during the lockdown, were silently dismantled all over India. In this, the state governments are also to blame as health is a state subject. Many isolation and Covid centres were opened in marriage halls, stadiums and parks in the first wave. They were dismantled all too soon without keeping up the preparedness for the second wave. The experience of the first wave, for example having oxygen plants at hospitals, was not carried out with tenders not being floated even eight months after the expert committee's recommendation. Elections with physical rallies flouting all Covid norms were allowed and so was the Kumbh mela with a congregation of over 20 lakh devotees. Despite knowing that we would need more than 200 crore doses of vaccines to fully inoculate about 70 percent of the population, orders were not placed nor were production facilities ramped up. Even now, the government is not using compulsory licensing method to allow all vaccine manufacturers to produce the vaccines.

The truth is that the government did absolutely nothing to prepare for the second wave and is now in denial. That will not do. It has to urgently address the shortcomings and bring the situation under control. Since the second wave is showing early signs of reaching a plateau, the government should not now make the mistake of letting the guard down. Experts have already warned about the third wave given the huge number of infections in the second. The government had earlier said that experts had not warned that the second wave would be so ferocious. That is not a valid excuse. It must now assume that the third wave would be even more ferocious and should prepare accordingly. 

pic courtesy: modified from an image at thehansindia.com