Article by Mr. Sameer Bhati (Director of Star Imaging & Path Lab)

Covid 19’s third wave is a concept which can become a hard reality because of us and has been even remained a concept so far because of us. From these lines it is crystal clear; Coronavirus spreading is closely related to our behaviour and how much sensitive we are as a citizen or human beings?

First and second waves have completely challenged our healthcare infrastructure and shown us our health system’s deficiencies in a hard way. We are completely failed to support our vast population an effective and responsive healthcare system when they needed it most.During second wave, it was well evident that we didn’t have sufficient isolation beds with proper oxygen support system as well as oxygen distribution and transportation system. It was observedthat during that time we had a huge shortage of testing kits and RT-PCR testing facilities, whereas, today we are witnessing biggest hospital admission policy flaws in Covid 19’s insurance patients claims settlements. These are few examples which clearly indicatethat there are lacunaein healthcare policy designing and its ground level implementation. A complete forensic auditing of this failure or deficiencies has revealed us many facts but the reason which is surprisingly the biggest contributor for this devastation is the fact that the health and healthcare sector is the least prioritized sector in India. It’s a high time to understand our needs and to list our priorities in such a way that it can help us during such emergency time.A responsive government and responsible nation are the one which learn a lesson from the past to make their future certain and secure. We also need to take a lesson from first and second Covid 19 waves and must built the assay of tests before third wave hit India in actual.

We have already seen many variants of Coronavirus and the variant which has hit the whole worldin a most drastic manneris the “Delta variant”. According to a study done through the genome sequencing data, how much prevalent was theDelta variant from January to July is shown below;

This is an eye opener how fast this deadly variant is spreading its footprints. In case of India,we hadseen almost negligible cases in January month but due to our negligence and then unresponsive healthcare system, its prevalence had jumped by 94 percent. In April and May month whole world had witnessed the menace of this variant. Today scientists and experts are still anticipating that this variant will play a very important role in bringing the third wave too. Now we need to analyze this scenario and implement some serious protocols as well as probes to check or handle third wave.

At Government levels:

1. An extreme urgency of close monitoring of new Coronavirus cases is needed and with the anticipation of the further pattern of this case scenario, well advance protocols or policies could be designed and briefed at the local administrative levels. For example, development of micro- containment zones and implementing thelockdown in designated areaswhere positivity rate has arisen to certain level. This anticipated reaction to the positivity rate will be decided as per the government’s protocol much before it becomes

1. Vaccination is a great probe against this virus and we have seen even in WHO data, countries where a vast majority of population has already been vaccinated, Coronavirus has either lost its speed of spread completely or shown the reducedseverity of the infection. Today, in our country, more than 53 crores of people who have already taken their first dose but in front of our vast population this figure is still minimal. New policies need to be designedin order to vaccinate more

1. To make an arrangement for making testing kits available at the doorstep of everyone. RT-PCR, CT and other testing probes shall be made in the reach of everyone in terms of availability and

1. Proper oxygen and medicine distribution system and related protocols are need to be designed and implemented.Hospitals, healthcare centres, children ICU, medicine shops, cremation grounds are need to be updated with more realistic facilities.

1. Strict laws to be made against black marketing, hoardings of essential medicines and equipments, manufacturing and sale of duplicate medicines

1. Medical emergency, basic procedures and Covid 19 related protocols should be made school and college course

At Individual and Society levels:

1. Masking, distancing and washing hands should be followed
2. Consider vaccination as an individual fundamental
3. Motivate people for testing and help in providing transportation to them if necessary.
4. Societies need to motivate people for following Covid 19 protocols and vaccinate
5. Societies need to develop healthcare facilities near their
6. Needs to develop a culture to help each

An aggressive testing is the best way to check the spread of third wave of Coronavirus. These deliverables are a type of testing which on one side help to stop Coronavirus third wave as preventive measure while on theother side, it will help to anticipate the future Coronavirus projections so that by strictly implementing Covid protocols menace of the pandemic that can be brought down. Current Coronavirus new cases data of US, UK, Australia is pointing towards the reemergence of this viral infection. But also help us in understanding how these countries had handled this spread. When our experts are indicating towards challenging situation for Children in the possible third wave, we need to develop a proper healthcare system for them in every district with trained healthcare workers.

Diagnostics testing are one of the method through which onset and rate of infection are generally measured but above mentioned deliverables will work as diagnostic test one hand and on the other hand will help in stopping the possible third wave which is also a big Covid test. We have seen testing is effective only in normal circumstances but at the time of peak hours or emergency, testing is least significant. We had seen that in April and May months the importance of testing was reduced to the least, whereas, the treatment had become the primary objective then. The current genome sequencing of Delhi has shown that 80% samples have Delta variant presence which is an alarming sign. We really don’t know herewho is infected and who is not, so everyone is in a risk. To stop this insecurity home testing, rapid antigen tests are sufficient to avoid RT-PCR test or possible wave.

These preventive and administrative measures are real key tests before landing onto the main big test when real possible third wave will hit India and situation will become critical.