Covid-19: Many lives could have been saved if Centre acted on time, says Parliament panel

Many lives could have been saved during India’s second wave of Covid-19 – that occurred from April 2021 to June 2021 – if containment strategies were implemented on time by the Central government, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health said on Monday, PTI reported.

The panel, in its 13th report to Rajya Sabha, said it was disappointed in the government for not anticipating the gravity of the crisis.

The second wave of Covid-19 in India was driven by the contagious B.1.617.2 variant, now known as Delta. By mid-June last year, India had reported nearly 3.73 lakh Covid-related deaths. Reuters reported that just in the capital city of New Delhi, four people were dying every minute.

India struggled with a grave oxygen crisis during the second wave of Covid-19. The shortages of life-saving gas as well as medicines and hospital beds forced families and friends of patients to plead for help on social media. Hospitals sent out SOS messages as their oxygen stocks ran dangerously low.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Monday said if the government had identified the virulent strain earlier, “the repercussions would have been less grave”, PTI reported. With the fragile health infrastructure and the huge shortage of healthcare workers, the country witnessed tremendous pressure, it said.

“There were several instances of families where patients pleasing for oxygen and waiting in queues for oxygen cylinders,” the panel said, ANI reported. “Media relayed stories of hospitals running out of oxygen and making desperate appeals when hospitals were reportedly left with only a few hours of oxygen supply.”

The government should have been vigilant after the first wave and continued monitoring the coronavirus cases, the committee said, PTI reported.

It noted that the states were unable to cope with issues arising from the resurgence of Covid-19, despite the health ministry’s advice to stay vigilant.

Now, the committee has asked the ministry and the state to audit the deaths due to oxygen shortages and put forth its findings so that the state governments can develop robust policies to combat public health emergencies, ANI reported.