A Life And Death Struggle

Grossly inadequate to begin with, India’s healthcare infrastructure was ill-prepared for a crisis of Covid’s magnitude. Yet, it rose to the challenge and made the best of limited resources

- Sonali Acharjee

On January 30, India reported its first case of Covid—an Indian student studying in Wuhan, ground zero of the novel coronavirus, who had returned home to Kerala. Over the next few weeks, three more cases were recorded in the state and Kerala’s health department went on high alert, shutting down state borders to contain the virus. There remained a relative sense of calm through the rest of India. “Initially, nobody in the world expected the pandemic to spread so quickly. That is why borders remained open till almost March,” says Dr N.N. Mathur, director, Lady Hardinge Medical College and Hospital (LHMC), Delhi. “A situation like this had not happened in recent memory and nobody guessed that within a few months the entire world would be under a lockdown.” LHMC had initially been directed to set up beds and to be on standby, while AIIMS Delhi and Jhajjar and Safdarjung Hospital, Delhi, were designated as major Covid hospitals. There were close to 1,000 beds available in the capital when the country went into a lockdown on March 24. But as the virus spread with alarming speed, LHMC, like several other institutes in the country, had to double their bed capacity to cater to patients. Today, Delhi has close to 18,000 beds earmarked for Covid cases and, nationally, there are over a million treatment beds meant exclusively for Covid. “By the time it was summer, we had to turn nearby guesthouses and our attached clinics into makeshift hospitals because patients just kept coming in,” adds Dr Mathur.

COVID’S SPREAD IN INDIA A look at the states and cities that saw the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, and others that had it a bit easier