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India’s COVID Tsunami

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The number of infections in India surpassed 17 million in recent days, and the official death toll now exceeds 190,000. How did everything go so wrong so soon after India recovered from the first wave of the pandemic last year, resumed normal life and economic activity, and started exporting vaccines?

By SHASHI THAROOR
It is humbling when a columnist must retract his words soon after penning them. Just two months ago, after India rushed millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines to over 60 countries, I praised the country’s “vaccine diplomacy.” India’s aspirations to be recognized as a global power had been given a real boost. Now, with more than 300,000 new cases a day and the death toll evidently much higher than reported, India is no one’s idea of a global leader. In my own defense, I was worried that India had exported three times as many vaccines as it had administered domestically. The country was clearly lagging behind its own target of immunizing 400 million people by August, after vaccinating some three million healthcare workers in a campaign that began only on January 16. “[M]ounting concern about rising case numbers, the emergence of COVID-19 variants that may not respond to existing vaccines, and an economy that has not yet fully recovered,” I noted, “will intensify the challenge India confronts in fulfilling its obligations to developing countries while also meeting domestic demand.”
At the time, I did not realize the scale of the challenge. The number of infections surpassed 17 million in recent days, and the official death toll now exceeds 190,000. Hospital beds are now overflowing, oxygen supplies have dwindled, vaccination centers have run out of doses, and pharmacies are unable to meet the demand for antivirals. India is reeling.
How did everything go so wrong so soon after India recovered from the first wave of the pandemic last year, resumed normal life and economic activity, and started exporting vaccines? The list of errors is long.
Begin with symbolism over substance. On national television, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged Indians to bang plates together. Two weeks later, he instructed them to light lamps at a specific moment. Superstition replaced science-based policies in confronting the pandemic.
Modi also enlisted Hindu nationalism in the fight against COVID-19. Just as the epic Mahabharata war was won in 18 days, he claimed, India would win the war against the coronavirus in 21 days. At no point was this based on anything more than wishful thinking.
Another error was ignoring the World Health Organization’s advice. From the start of the crisis, the WHO recommended a containment strategy that required testing, contact tracing, isolation, and treatment. While a handful of states, like Kerala (which recorded India’s first COVID-19 case on January 30, 2020), initially implemented such measures successfully, the Modi government’s ham-handed response resulted in their uneven application in several states.
Then there was over-centralization. From the first nationwide lockdown, announced by Modi in March 2020 with less than four hours’ notice, the central government managed the pandemic under obscure provisions of the Epidemic Diseases Act and the Disaster Management Act, which allowed it to ride roughshod over India’s federal structure. Instead of delegating India’s 28 state governments the authority to design strategies tailored to local conditions, the central government tried to manage COVID-19 by decree from Delhi, with calamitous results.
And, no surprise, the initial lockdown was mismanaged. State governments, the public, and even central government officials were caught unprepared. Chaos resulted, with some 30 million migrant workers, stranded without work in cities, forced to walk home, sometimes for days. It is estimated that 198 people died along the way. Some five million micro and small enterprises closed, unable to recover from the shutdown. India’s unemployment reached the highest levels ever recorded.
As the crisis began to slip out of control, the central government, following then-US President Donald Trump’s precedent, passed off more and more responsibilities to state governments, without adequate funding. The state governments struggled to mobilize doctors, nurses, health workers, testing kits, personal protective equipment, hospital beds, ventilators, oxygen cylinders, and medicines to fight the pandemic. The government mobilized a huge amount of funds for a new relief entity called “PM-CARES,” but to this day there is no public accounting of how much money is in the opaque PM-CARES Fund and where its resources have been allocated.
When the pandemic seemed to have waned, the authorities settled into complacency, taking no precautions or preventive measures against a possible second wave that many warned could be more devastating than the first. Testing, tracking, and isolation of infected people and their contacts fell rapidly into disuse by the end of 2020. And just when people stopped following appropriate behavioral guidelines, the virus evolved an extremely infectious variant. Super-spreader events proliferated: election rallies and religious festivals packed together unmasked throngs. The contagion raged.
Although India produces 60% of the world’s vaccines, the government took no steps to scale up production of the two COVID-19 vaccines cleared for manufacture in the country. Nor did it permit the import of foreign vaccines, help expand available manufacturing facilities, or license other Indian firms to produce doses. India launched its vaccination drive nearly two months after the United Kingdom, but by April, only 37% of health workers, and barely 1.3% of India’s 1.4 billion people, had been fully vaccinated. Only 8% had received at least one vaccine shot.
Here, too, the authorities initially bet on centralization, and its refusal to grant emergency-use approval to vaccines from abroad led to a nationwide shortage of vaccines by mid-April. It was only at this point that the government delegated the vaccine roll-out to state governments and public and private hospitals and permitted the import of vaccines approved by the United States, the UK, the European Union, Russia, and Japan. Even then, the central government failed to distribute vaccines equitably to the various states, resulting in some of the worst-affected (like opposition-ruled Maharashtra and Kerala) running short of vaccines as cases peaked.
Like India’s government, I was prematurely self-congratulatory about the country’s vaccine diplomacy. At a time when Indians were unable to access the vaccines that might have protected them, India’s “Vaccine Maitri” program was not smart, but hubristic. Global leadership must begin at home, and today home is a country whose mortuaries, graveyards, and crematoria are running out of space.

Shashi Tharoor, a former UN under-secretary-general and former Indian Minister of State for External Affairs and Minister of State for Human Resource Development, is an MP for the Indian National Congress. He is the author of Pax Indica: India and the World of the 21st Century.

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Fasil Ketema just short of a point to snatch BetKing EPL trophy

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Fasil Ketema is just a point short of its first ever Ethiopian Premier League title. Back in top form Mujib Kasim is breathing hot behind leading top scorer Ethiopia Bunna’s Abubaker Naser.
“The Emperors” 2-1 victory over bottom of the table Adama Ketema on Wednesday extended their lead at the top to 15 points and their nearest pursuers Ethiopia Bunna couldn’t get the win they needed to keep the title race alive.
With four matches still to play Seyoum Kebede’s side is to bring the BetKing Championship trophy to Gondor for the very first time in the club’s history. Only one defeat and four draws in twenty matches, Fasil deservedly to take aloft the coveted championship trophy as the most consistent side in the 2021 league season. Scoring 35 goals means the side is next only to Ethiopia Bunna with 36 while conceding only twelve that is next to Hadiya-Hossana.
In the meantime Fasil’s goal machine Mujib Kasim recovered in time to catch up with runaway leading top scorer Abubaker Naser. Mujib scored in the past four consecutive matches thus his goal tally reached 19 that is just three short of Abubaker. Twelve goals into his name Giorgis marksman Getaneh Kebede is trailing third from afar.
A goal less draw with AbaJifar on Wednesday Ethiopia Bunna stayed second with 34 points from 19 matches, while St George slipped down to fourth after the shocking 2-1 defeat at the hands of Wolayta-Dicha.

Ethiopian Marathon trials to be held in Ethiopia, Kenenisa might not participate due to injury concern

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Plans for the Ethiopian Athletics Federation to hold its Olympic marathon trials in Geneva, Switzerland, this weekend have been scrapped. The race, which had originally been scheduled for Sunday, May 2, will now be held on Saturday, May 1, in Sebeta, Ethiopia which sits at 7,730 feet of elevation roughly 15 miles southwest of the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. The format will remain the same, with the top three finishers earning spots on the Ethiopian team for the Olympic marathon in Sapporo this summer, though the distance will be 35 kilometers (21.7 miles) as opposed to a full marathon.
Haji Adilo, coach of the Ethiopian Olympic marathon team, told LetsRun the trials were moved from Geneva due to COVID concerns. Many top Ethiopian athletes have been based in hotels in Addis Ababa since January and Adilo said there was concern that traveling to Switzerland could result in a positive test ruling an athlete out of the trials at the last minute.
Despite moving the trials to Ethiopia making the race more accessible to the country’s aspiring Olympians Adilo said the races will remain small. Adilo said the women’s race will consist of just six athletes: Roza Dereje, Birhane Dibaba, Degitu Azimeraw, Zeineba Yimer, Tigist Girma, and Ashete Bekere.
The men’s race will be slightly larger, in part due to injury concerns surrounding three of Ethiopia’s biggest stars: Kenenisa Bekele (three-time Olympic gold medalist, second-fastest marathon ever), Birhanu Legese (two-time Tokyo champ, 2:02:48 pb), and Mosinet Geremew (World Championship silver medalist, 2:02:55 pb). It’s possible all three of them don’t run the race and with only three other athletes (Sisay Lemma, Lelisa Desisa, and Shura Kitata) in the field, it would have made little sense to hold a three-person trials if Bekele, Legese, and Geremew end up withdrawing. So the field has expanded, with Adilo saying Mule Wasihun (2:03:16 pb), Getaneh Molla (2:03:34 pb, 2019 Dubai champ), and Kinde Atanaw (2:03:51 pb, 2019 Valencia champ) also expected to compete.