Covid-19: What you need to know today

Is Delhi prepared?

That isn’t a question designed to be alarmist. On Thursday, the number of Covid-19 cases in Delhi rose to 293, driven upward by more people who attended the gathering of the Tablighi Jamaat at its HQ testing positive. That trend is likely to continue — in terms of both an increase in cases, and more from the Jamaat gathering testing positive. Hundreds evacuated from the Markaz Nizamuddin are in hospitals in Delhi; around 1,800 are in quarantine. Which is why this is an opportune time to ask the question.

Is Delhi prepared? New York City clearly wasn’t. On Thursday, the number of Covid-19 fatalities in the city touched 1,397. On Wednesday, the New York Times listed the wishlist, in terms of critical medical equipment, of the city’s mayor Bill de Blaiso: 3.3 million N95 masks, 2.1 million surgical masks, 100,000 isolation gowns, 400 ventilators. All these are incremental numbers — requirements additional to what the city currently has.

Administrators and health care professionals shaping India’s response to the pandemic would do well to study what is happening in New York City — what it got right and, more importantly, what it didn’t.

It emerges that the big issue in Delhi right now is the shortage of PPE (personal protective equipment). This is a problem in other cities and states, and, indeed, in many parts of the world. Last week, the Indian government said it has placed orders with local and global manufacturers for around six million units of PPEs. Work on these to be proceeding apace, despite the hurdles posed by the lockdowns.

Delhi government officials and doctors also say the city-state has enough isolation wards, ICUs, even ventilators, but many of these assessments are based on conservative estimates of the number of daily cases, in some cases, as low as 100. On April 1, New York City reported 3,144 new cases in a day. That’s the kind of number for which Delhi should be ready — and then heave a sigh of relief and celebrate when the numbers stay low.

It’s also the kind of number for which Mumbai should be ready. On Wednesday, a 56-year-old man in Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum, in Mumbai, died of Covid-19. On Thursday, another person who worked in Dharavi tested positive. The prospect of the infection raging through the shanty town with a population density of 66,000 per square km is the stuff of which nightmares are made.

Parts of Mumbai are already being treated as hot spots where clusters of infected people are found. There are around 13 such across India. The area around Markaz Nizamuddin is another cluster — where door-to-door surveys of people within a 3km and a 5km radius of the epicentre (in this case, the six-storey HQ) were undertaken on Thursday.

Amidst all these local developments, US unemployment numbers soared to 6.6 million from 3.3 million last week — a statistic that should worry India because it shows the extent of economic havoc that can be wreaked by the pandemic.

Around the world, companies are being forced to lay off people to cope — in India, apart from the few companies providing essential products and services that continue to function through a 21-day lockdown, every other business is idle, incurring costs with no revenue. The US has already announced a fiscal package amounting to roughly 10% of its GDP, with some of this amount going to businesses. France has said it will pay companies to not retrench people. India, too, needs to think in terms of a fiscal package for businesses. Even with one, the recovery will be slow and painful. Without one...