Data drive: Fighting the second wave

While the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in the country is spreading faster than the first, vaccination has been progressing at a slow speed. Initially concentrated in Maharashtra, new cases are rising in other states. Many states have imposed night curfew, which has affected mobility and will impact the nascent economic recovery. The daily new cases crossed last year’s peak, which has also led to an increase in the case-load. India has been reporting the highest daily cases of the virus over the past few days, and the country’s total cases crossed 13 million with the last 1 million cases coming in just 11 days. The state governments must ramp up testing and contact tracing, and enforce Covid-safe behaviour which helped the country fight the first wave.

Vaccines are crucial for slowing down the spread. Till April 8, around 95 million vaccine doses have been
administered and only three states — Kerala, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh — have covered 5% of their population. To increase vaccination, supply needs to be ramped up. As the current vaccination rate is 3.4 million a day, the existing 43 million stocks of doses will last around 12 days. The current production capacity is around 70 million.

The government could provide financial assistance to manufacturers to ramp up capacity.