There have been a lot of views on the rising number of COVID-19 cases in India. The latest comment has come from the former governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Raghuram Rajan. He stated the rising number of infections is due to the complacency after last year’s first wave, accompanied by “lack of foresight, and a lack of leadership”. But he added that the government is now getting its act together.
He said this during a television interview with Bloomberg. He added, “If you were careful, if you were cautious, you had to recognise that it wasn’t done yet.”
Rajan added that India’s relative success against the first wave of COVID-19, was followed by India not swiftly preparing enough vaccines for its own population. “Some of that may be the sense that we had time. That since we had dealt with the virus we could roll out the vaccination slowly,” he said, adding that the government is now “getting its act together” and in “emergency mode.”
According to government data on May 4 early morning, India has administered more than 16 crore vaccine doses to its citizens. The cumulative number of COVID19 vaccine doses administered in the country stands at 16,04,18,105 as per the provisional report. India also administered more than 13 crore doses as the first dose and more than 3 crore vaccine doses have been administered as the second dose.
Rajan, a former International Monetary Fund chief economist and now a professor of finance at University of Chicago, said, “...there was a sense that we had endured the worst the virus could give us and we had come through and it was time to open up, and that complacency hurt us,” said Rajan, a former International Monetary Fund chief economist and now a professor of finance at University of Chicago.
On Tuesday, India crossed the 20-million mark. Recently cases have dropped marginally, with 3,57,229 people testing positive in the last 24 hours. At the same time, there were 3,20,289 discharges and 3,449 deaths recorded. Within the country, Maharashtra continues to lead the case tally with more than 6.5 lakh active cases. Not too far behind is Karnataka with over 4.4 lakh active cases. With the latest numbers, India's cumulative caseload since the pandemic began now stands at 2,02,82,833.