Fault Lines in India's COVID-19 Management: Lessons Learned and Future Recommendations

With about 0.4-0.5 million COVID cases diagnosed every single day in a row over the past three weeks back in May 2021, India was at the epicenter of the global viral rampage. The catastrophe of this crisis was unprecedented, pushing the health care system to its breaking point. Although significant progress has been made in identifying these highly transmissible variants, what is somewhat lacking is the competence to exploit this information for risk mitigation and effective disease management through an integrated nationwide coordinated approach. With a positivity rate of 15-20% (April-May 2021) and the healthcare system pushed to its limit, accompanied by increased mortality, the situation was rather grim then. Though the central command scrambled all its resources and logistics to streamline the supply chain, the efforts were insufficient in response to the ongoing crisis due to a disproportionate rise in the case. We examined the current scenario emerging from this 2nd COVID wave and identified the possible lacunae. We also suggested few recommendations that may be adopted to avoid similar failures in the future.