India’s COVID boom is affecting the entire world.

On Friday, India set a record of 217,000 COVID-19 infections within 24 hours, far exceeding any other country (and probably still counting the total, given the subcontinent’s long inadequate testing regime). This week it surpassed Brazil as the second most infected country in the world, and it is now just behind the United States in total infection and mortality rates. Reports on packaged hospitals, low oxygen supply, crowded crematoria, and the distribution of several variants is abundant. As worrying as it is for India itself, the growing global demand for vaccines and the deadly new variants developing in the country pose serious dangers to the rest of the world.

The easily transmissible B.1.1.7 strain, which originated in the United Kingdom, has taken root in the subcontinent as elsewhere – but it is not the only variant of its kind or even the most worrying. According to data from Johns Hopkins, in the first half of April, the state of Maharashtra not only had the largest group of new businesses in the country, but also within the country. the whole Asian continent. Much of this is due to a so-called double mutant, which in India consists of the easily transmissible strain that was first found in Brazil and South Africa, as well as another mutation that helps the virus to boost the immune system of the to circumvent body. Neeraj Kaushik, a professor at the National Institute of Technology, mentioned in a report to the Delhi police other worrying features of the variant and pointed out that the variant infects younger people, spreads faster among families and groups, and that it could not be detected in certain tests, causing new symptoms. The National Institute of Virology in Pune studied hundreds of Maharashtra virus samples from January to March and found that 61 percent of them matched the characteristics of this double mutant. Initially, the mutation was underestimated by the state as well as the national governments, despite the fact that it was first detected in December; On Tuesday, Maharashtra’s prime minister began a 15-day period in which only ‘essential services’ would operate, though he took care not to mention it as a closure, and also sent police to enforce security measures.

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Meanwhile, stories of the pandemic impact are simply repeating themselves. Infections spread in other parts of India, such as Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh, and states such as Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh laid down new curfew rules or extended existing curfew hours; Delhi, the single ruined metropolis, has halted several business operations, including restaurants, and is also installing a curfew rule this weekend. Urban low-wage and domestic workers, cut off from their livelihoods, leave in large numbers for their families’ remote villages, and quite possibly bring the virus with them. Members of the Lancet COVID-19 Public Health Task Force repeatedly urge Indians to take extra safety measures, saying that ‘vaccines will not be enough’ in light of variants. Last week, New Zealand banned visitors from India, claiming that the recent increase seen at the border (23 cases) was mostly spurred on by 17 Indian travelers. Other countries have not yet banned flights from India, but that could happen soon.

Less than four months ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government declared victory over the pandemic and began work on the world’s largest vaccination campaign, approving the manufacture and use of the British brand AstraZeneca vaccine (India). Covishield) as well as India’s own vaccine, Covaxin, manufactured by local drug manufacturer Bharat Biotech. The World Trade Organization’s intellectual property regulations still prevent India from producing generic forms of approved, vaccinations with trademarks – a staggering decision for many reasons, not least because the cheap, effective generic products in the country are one of the largest export products. – but the country was still determined to vaccinate its indigenous people, but also gave vaccinations to its neighbors and allies. It was largely planned as a contradiction with the geopolitical rival of China’s global vaccine distribution campaign. The United States was also pleased to work with India to accelerate manufacturing and distribution.

In the first few months of 2021, the vaccine program seemed a resounding success, even as COVID cases began to drip upward (and subsequently underestimated by the government). By this week, India claims to have already distributed more than 100 million individual doses for domestic vaccines – an impressive number that would not even make up 8 percent of India’s population, not to mention that at this stage only 11 million people were not. fully vaccinated (all currently available vaccines in India require two shots). The country’s foreign ministry also claimed that as of Friday, it had exported more than 65 million vaccines to at least 90 countries, mostly to developing countries that had struggled to obtain vaccines.

Yet, with the virus still destroying the country, optimism about India’s recovery has waned, and systems are rapidly adapting again. Vaccine rollouts have slowed amid recent gains, which put further measures (including the vaccination of 250 million “priority people” by July) out of reach and predict a year-long battle towards herd immunity. Last month, the government stopped exporting Covishield to prioritize the indigenous population; On Tuesday, he announced that it would grant permission for vaccines used in other countries, including Russia’s Sputnik V. India is also trying to get the Pfizer vaccine, which his government shook off in January after refusing to sign an indemnity . mortgage – an agreement that other countries have agreed on with Pfizer contracts – which would vaccinate the company from potential lawsuits due to side effects. Moderna appears to be reluctant to take its product to India, while Johnson & Johnson is in talks with the Indian government for an agreement on the one-shot vaccine, although the recent disruption in the US further skepticism among Indians who are hesitant against vaccine.

Meanwhile, the reception of local vaccines depends on the national effort – and the increase is getting weaker. At least ten states have a shortage of vaccines in their territories, leading to vaccination sites closing or turning people away; in turn, national leaders deny that there is a shortage and rather blame the states for allegedly poor logistics. India’s Serum Institute, which manufactures Covishield, has publicly acknowledged that its capacity is ‘very stressed’. In addition, Covaxin’s production will also be sluggish, in part due to a lack of supply of a key ingredient from the US; consequently, states like Punjab lack second doses for those who are on schedule to receive it. These logistical issues exacerbate further problems for Punjabi health officials, who have already experienced difficulty accepting vaccinated elderly people to take the shots. And the reluctance of Indian vaccines is not limited to age: in other cities, poor urban workers whose livelihoods have already been affected by economic recession, avoid the vaccine, and worry that the lack of time for work to get the shots, will jeopardize their work.

All this was unfortunately foreseeable. After a chaotic home order in the spring of 2020 that displaced tens of millions of people from their homes, India never again imposed such large-scale restrictions, and individual states often had to come up with their own answers with successful results in certain regions and disadvantaged regions. other. During the pandemic, Modi and his ideological acolytes mainly did what they did best over the past seven years: reduce problems, fuel cultural wars and not address the consequences of their own policies and pronouncements.

On Monday and Wednesday, 3 million maskless Hindus from across the country gathered in close crowds at the Ganga River to observe the Kumbh Mela holiday; Hundreds of participants in Monday’s festivities tested positive for the virus, and it was found that nearly 200 devotees were there already been positive when they reached the river. There is a notable contrast between the reaction of the Indian government and its ideological allies to this event and the reaction to Muslims who celebrated early in the pandemic during religious events. Back in the spring of 2020, the hashtag #CoronaJihad dominated social media, and Muslims who held rallies were excessively blamed for viral distribution. The number of Kumbh Mela cases exceeds the numbers of Islamic observations, but there is unlikely to be any similar uproar.

Religious festivals are not the only crowd likely to play a role in the viral spread: local political elections are on the rise. The states of Assam, Kerala and Tamil Nadu are holding elections until the end of the month, despite the lack of distance in political rallies and tense skirmishes at polling stations. These very states are experiencing huge increases, but federal government officials are still prioritizing events in states such as West Bengal, whose local election is seen as a referendum on Modi’s conservative Bharatiya Janata party.

But it is not only poor public examples that other countries from India have to fear, it is also the provision of vaccines. India’s Covishield has become an integral part of COVAX, an initiative supported by the World Health Organization to obtain vaccines to lower-income countries; At the end of March, India had provided almost 30 million doses for the use of COVAX. As Covishield is for the time being completely domestic, countries without a strong manufacturing base or health systems that benefit from India’s generosity will have to lose and slow down the COVAX effort itself. Regions of the world with increased production capacity for vaccines, including the US and the European Union, remain stingy with the share of vaccines, while a Chinese government official recently raised the effectiveness of domestic and exported vaccines in his own country. Because of all this, more than 85 of the poorest countries in the world may not have adequate access to vaccines before 2023, according to the Economist. India’s generosity against vaccines has helped close the gap left by other heavyweights, but re-prioritizing it domestically could now have the unfortunate effect of making dependent countries a higher risk for viral spread, economic shutdown and different emergence. Speaking of variants: Maharashtra’s double mutant has now been found in at least eight other countries. With the rapid worldwide reach of the British, South African and Brazilian variants, it will probably not be long before India’s variant also gets a deadly hold.

The pandemic is far from over in India. On the contrary, it has become even more awful than before. The rest of the world can not afford it.