IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON INDIA
India, along with the rest of the world, faced a massive downfall since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Are you keen on understanding the impact of the pandemic on India as a developing nation? Are you curious to know how the country survived during the peak period of the COVID-19 attack?
Hospacxx Healthcare Consultancy shares through this article, the harsh and unavoidable losses that India had to face and yet some innovative and rapid measures for success, the country made by taking the most advantage out of the threatening pandemic, in creating opportunities for a more progressive and secure future for its citizens.
THE COVID-19 ERA IN INDIA
The world drastically changed since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic had a devastating impact on the global economy and the health of communities across the world. Globalization had emerged as a means to ensure economic and cultural growth of individuals. But unfortunately, globalization is the very reason for the spread of the disease, due to trade and travel across International Borders. The spread of COVID-19 virus began in India, after an Indian returnee from China landed in Kerala in January 2020. The frequent domestic travels between Indian States for Trade, leisure and academics, without any aseptic measures, led to the wildfire spread of the viral infection.
- THE DOOM IN INDIAN ECONOMY
The Indian Economy has been declining slowly in its GDP value since 2017. From the GDP growth rate in the financial year of 2016-2017 was at 9.3% per annum, it dropped to a rate of 3% in 2019-2020. In the post-independence period, India’s national income has declined only four times before 2020 – in 1958, 1966, 1973 and 1980 – with the largest drop being in 1980 (5.2%). This means that 2020/21 is the worst year in terms of economic contraction in the country’s history, at a rate of contraction of 7.3%.
The pandemic-induced economic crisis after March 2020 affected all economic sectors. In agriculture, farmers were faced with broken supply chains, lack of market outlets, poor demand and falling output prices. In industry, micro and small enterprises were the most acutely affected, where India’s Index of Industrial Production (IIP), which stood at 134.2 in February 2020, fell to just 54.0 in April 2020. Surveys showed that about 35% of all MSMEs were likely to shut down permanently.
The crisis also led to a major loss of employment. It was estimated that within a month of lockdown, the unemployment rate in India increased dramatically, from 8.7% in March to 23.52% in April 2020. This resulted in job losses for an estimated 140 million people and an income drop for more than 45% of households.
- THE INDIAN POPULATION
The spread of COVID-19 in India was initially characterized by lower case numbers and fewer deaths compared with numbers in many developed countries. This was mainly due to a stringent lockdown and demographic factors. However, economic constraints forced a staggered lockdown exit strategy, resulting in a spike in COVID-19 case s in June 2020. Subsequently, India became the third-worst affected country worldwide. According to the recordings taken by Worldometer, up to 2022, there have been 43,036,928 Covid cases in India, out of which, 42,504,329 cases recovered from the disease, while 521,723 deaths have occurred due to pandemic.
Contributing factors that led to such a rise in the case fatality rate are:
- Majority of the affected population, especially the poorer sections of the population, were deprived of emergency healthcare facilities due to non-availability or inaccessible of the oxygen masks, emergency medication, respiratory assistive devices.
- There were also lack of adequate & stringent sanitization measures taken, lack of awareness or initiative to take responsibility to take sterile measures for one’s own safety and that of others.
There were reports of High rates of behavioural changes amongst Indians, especially during the 55 day long complete lockdown like loneliness, depression, tendency to suicide and other traits like anxiety, fear, antisocial, insomnia due to the frustration and stress that rose from isolation from loved ones, loss of jobs and income and social stigma amongst the society against covid affected individuals and loss of loved ones due to the pandemic.
India is the world’s second-most populous and the third-worst affected country by COVID-19 to date (in terms of the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases). Social distancing is a key part of tackling the spread of COVID-19, but a high population density made social distancing challenging. Furthermore, more than half of the elderly population in India has co-morbidities, e.g. hypertension and diabetes, which would potentially increase these individuals’ risk of contracting COVID-19.
- HEALTHCARE SECTOR IN THE PANDEMIC PERIOD
Amongst all the economic sectors that contribute to the growth of the country, the Healthcare sector was the most burdened under the unanticipated pressure from the impact of the pandemic.
- Healthcare centres: Public Health centres lacked the essential facilities to provide support to covid affected patients due to the non-availability of required medicines, oxygen cylinders, equipment like ventilator, adequate number of ambulatory services and untimely response from the public healthcare staff.
- Private hospitals have also suffered a great hit from the pandemic due to the sudden disease burden with non-availability of beds, oxygen cylinders, ventilators, understaffing of doctors and nurses, and medicines. Some hospitals converted a section of the inpatient facilities into Covid centres.
- Some hospitals also expanded their hospital bed capacity to build a separate Inpatient department dedicated for covid patients. Elective surgeries and OPD consultations were not considered as a priority in order to give the main preference to provide medical care and other supportive services for covid patients.
– Government initiatives were taken to provide helpline number to enquire about the availability of beds (with ventilator or only oxygen cylinder) based on the patient symptoms & criticality of the condition. Other changes in India included contingency plans for an anticipated surge in cases. Railway coaches (2,500) were converted to isolation wards, making available an additional capacity of 40,000 beds.
- Paramedical staff, including volunteers, ex-service people, homeopathic and ayurvedic practitioners, medical students, teachers, doctors (including retired doctors), and others, were identified at municipal, district and state levels to create an online data pool of 15,896,093 human resources for various activities required to fight COVID-19, wherein each person was designated a ‘COVID warrior’, and a surveillance policy of one COVID warrior per 250 citizens was devised.
- With the increased supply of infrastructure and human resources, it was equally important to match the demand for medical equipment and medicines. With the involvement of private hospitals, the demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) increased.
- Medical tourism was on a halt due to the government policy of restriction or ban on Interstate or International travel to curb the spread of the infection. Moreover, people were in constant fear for acquiring infection from Covid 19 and eventually, there was a standdown of Medical Value Tourism (MVT) with the temporary shutdown of all wellness clinics and other holistic health centres.
- Drug and pharmaceutical industry India’s pharmaceutical industry, which is third largest in the world by volume, sources the majority of its active pharmaceutical ingredients from China. This supply was affected owing to the virus outbreak in China. Hence, during the initial phases of lockdown, Indian exports were prohibited or restricted to maintain an undisrupted supply chain for the nation. However, following a tremendous increase in indigenous manufacturing capacity, medical exports began opening up again during July. There was on an upscale with increase in the production and export of pharmaceutical products due to increased demand for essential medications, vaccines and sanitizers.
- The Emergence of Digitalization of Healthcare services was one of the major breakthroughs for the Healthcare sector. Digitalization in India has been rapidly growing during the pandemic, with the use of Telemedicine for online video consultations, Healthcare Management System Software for secure documentation and easy access of Electronic Medical Records and surveillance for hospital performance. Besides that, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been in immense use for diagnostics, appointment bookings for vaccination and other medical consultation.
- Homecare screening facilities: Due to the regulation of Social Distancing and limited access in hospitals for medical services due to the increased number of patients for Covid 19 care, majority of the hospitals and public health centres have initiated the provision of home medical care visits like Rehabilitation services, supply of assistive medical devices like oxygen cylinders with mask, home nursing services, collection of blood & urine sample for health check-ups & sample collection for RTPCR tests etc. Such initiates have been started to avoid avoidable crowding at hospitals and diagnostic centres.
CONCLUSION
Though the Indian Nation, as a whole, had to face many difficulties with the uncertainties and losses occurred due to the Covid Pandemic, there is still a ray of hope for the country to get back to a better normal circumstance. Due to the extent of improvisation done in the healthcare sector with new government and private healthcare initiatives, creation of newer and more advanced heath sectors like Digital Health Systems, India is in the making to achieve optimal quality and efficient healthcare services for all, probably in power with the remaining developed nations in the world.
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