In the long year that the pandemic lasts, the eyes of the world have shifted from China to Europe and then to America. Today they are all in India, which is experiencing an uncontrolled situation, a humanitarian emergency due to the coronavirus as no other country has experienced, if the number of deaths and daily diagnoses is taken into account. The international community is mobilizing to help this crisis in which almost everything is lacking - ventilators, oxygen, drugs, beds to care for the sick ... - while scientists use the crisis in the subcontinent as an example of the importance of accelerating vaccination also in developing countries. "Until we are all protected, no one is protected" is the mantra they repeat.
With its more than 1.3 billion inhabitants, India is more like a continent than a country. Never has one alone produced so many daily cases. This Tuesday there were 320,000 and 2,771 deaths, slightly less than on Monday, but we cannot speak of a change in trend. The cumulative incidence continues to rise and on Tuesday reached 285 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in 14 days, according to the website My World in Data, a data repository of the University of Oxford. And as Fernando Simón, director of the Center for Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies, recalled Monday, it is likely that diagnoses are only the tip of the iceberg, since the country's detection capacity is very limited.
In this context, Western countries are mobilizing the sending of aid to alleviate the crisis.
The Minister Spokesperson, María José Montero, announced on Tuesday a shipment of medical supplies from Spain to India.
The European Union is trying to coordinate the response of the members and cover the transport costs.
Brussels plans to send "in the next few days" to India a shipment of oxygen, medicines and urgently required equipment through the Civil Protection Mechanism of the European Union (EU), as explained by the Commission this Tuesday in a statement.
The emergency mechanism was activated last Friday at the request of international aid from New Delhi and will coordinate the contributions of the different member states, reports
Guillermo Abril
.
More information
PHOTO GALLERY: Hospital collapse in India due to the advance of the second wave
"Alarmed by the epidemiological situation in India", said this Sunday the president of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, through a tweet.
“We are ready to help.
The EU is gathering resources to respond quickly ”.
So far, the European initiative has contributed Ireland (with 700 oxygen concentrators, an oxygen generator and 365 respirators), Belgium (with 9,000 doses of Remdesivir antivirals), Romania (80 oxygen concentrators and 75 oxygen cylinders), Luxembourg (58 respirators), Portugal (5,503 vials of Remdesivir and 20,000 liters of oxygen per week) and Sweden (120 respirators).
The Commission hopes to obtain substantial aid from large countries such as France and Germany in the coming days.
"We are in close contact with Paris and Berlin," said a spokesman for the Community Executive on Tuesday.
"The EU stands in full solidarity with the Indian people and is ready to do everything possible to support them at this critical moment," says Janez Lenarčič, European Commissioner for Crisis Management, in the statement, explaining that the Center for Coordination of the Emergency Response takes care of the logistical arrangements.
The United States is also processing aid that will consist of oxygen concentrators, drugs and vaccines, the White House announced on Monday after a conversation between US President Joseph Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
All this help is “very necessary”, in the words of Gerardo Álvarez-Uría, a good connoisseur of the country and its health system as a doctor and director of the infectious unit of the Bathalapalli hospital, in the State of Andra Pradesh, for the Vicente Foundation Ferrer.
“There is a huge deficit of respirators, oxygen and drugs.
It is a system that receives very little investment and in which technical resources are scarcer than personnel ”, he says.
Accelerate vaccination
The crisis in India is putting on the table the need to accelerate vaccination in developing countries. Daniel López Acuña, who was director of emergencies for the World Health Organization, recalls that covid "is a pandemic" and, as such, controlling it in a country does not mean ending the risk. One of the variants that circulate in India makes the virus potentially more contagious and resistant to vaccines, which can cause problems beyond the crisis that the country is experiencing.
Acuña also warns that the inequity in world vaccination can generate "important problems for the control of the pandemic." As Marcos López Hoyos, president of the Spanish Immunology Society, explained to EL PAÍS, "the longer the virus is circulating and there are more infections, the more likely there are mutations that cause problems."
Rafael Vilasanjuan, analysis director of ISGlobal, a health institute promoted by the La Caixa Foundation, emphasizes that "until the virus is not controlled worldwide, we are at risk." "If the governments of developed countries are only concerned with vaccinating their population, they are actually doing them a disservice," he says. A member of the global Gavi alliance, which coordinates the Covax plan to bring vaccines to low- and middle-income countries, says this is the only way to distribute doses more equitably, but calls on countries to start donate vaccines before they run out. This Tuesday Spain has announced that it will begin to do so when it has punctured 50% of the population.
📺 LIVE TV |
The Foreign Minister reports on "the commitment to share vaccines that Spain has acquired with Latin American countries as soon as Spain has reached the threshold of 50% of vaccinated citizens" https://t.co/3wBFN76nN1 pic.twitter.com/yhqv0OfCcS
- EL PAÍS (@el_pais) April 27, 2021
India is precisely the largest vaccine manufacturer in the world.
And the Covax initiative is enormously behind schedule, in part because the country had paralyzed exports to use the doses on its citizens.
"We are afraid that with this crisis it will happen again, we should avoid this type of nationalism," says Vilasanjuan.
Covax has distributed for the moment only 52 million doses of the 2,000 that it has planned until the end of the year, although this expert believes that, as has happened in Europe, the pace will now begin to accelerate to reach that goal.
“This also requires financial resources.
6,000 of the 8,000 million euros needed have already been collected, but it is necessary to get the other 2,000 so that there are no problems in purchases ”, adds Vilasanjuan.
While the population is vaccinated, countries are imposing restrictions to prevent the Indian variant from spreading around the world.
“It is urgent to sequence the largest number of samples to see if it expands outside the country, as has already happened in the United Kingdom.
And you have to consider a containment strategy, ”says Acuña.
Spain has appealed this Tuesday to all Spaniards who are temporarily in India to "return as soon as possible."
The Council of Ministers this Tuesday, in addition, has approved the mandatory quarantine for all people arriving from that country.
⚠️The Embassy of Spain recommends that Spaniards who are temporarily in #India return to 🇪🇦 as soon as possible.
In case of emergency contact the Embassy or Consulate General in Mumbai More info on travel recommendations: https://t.co/Hq4xQDEgnm@MAECgob
- Emb.
Spain in India (@EmbEspIndia) April 27, 2021