Coronavirus: How prepared is India?  

The third novel coronavirus case has been reported in India, with another Keralite student who returned from Wuhan university on Monday testing positive for the infection.

China's death toll has approached to 500 in a month-long outbreak of Coronavirus with no signs of a slowdown.

India has evacuated its students and travellers from China. Around 2000 of them are under quarantine observation.

While China struggles to fight the epidemic, the biggest question is, that how prepared is India for coronavirus catastrophy.

Many health experts point to the country’s ill-preparedness to deal with a public health emergency of such magnitude.

Though no case has been detected so far in the country, nearly 450 people are currently under observation.

To be sure, the 2019 Global Health Security Index report examined the ability of 195 countries to prevent, detect and respond to public health emergencies.

The report showed that the national health security of various countries is fundamentally weak and that no country is fully prepared for epidemics.

The average overall global health security score, based on 140 norms, was only 40.2 out of 100.

India scored 46.5 – placing it at 57 in the ranking. In the Southeast Asia region...

...even Thailand and Indonesia performed better than India with scores of 73.2 and 56.6, respectively.

Official figures reveal the dismal state of India’s healthcare infrastructure.

There are only 23,582 government hospitals with 710,761 beds in the country, according to the National Health Profile 2018.

These include 19,810 hospitals in rural areas with 279,588 beds and 3,772 hospitals in urban areas with 431,173 beds.

There are a total of 2,900 blood banks, which means less than three blood banks for every 1 million population.

With more than 70 percent of India’s population living in rural areas, healthcare delivery will be an uphill task, particularly in case of a disease outbreak.

Since there is no cure in sight for coronavirus and an outbreak can quickly turn uncontrollable, clinicians in India stress the importance of preventive measures.

Currently, only the National Institute of Virology in Pune is conducting the tests.

Four new laboratories are being prepared but this number seems to be insufficient.

Sudarshan Ballal, a nephrologist and director of Manipal Institute of Nephrology and Urology, said he doesn’t think India can expect cures soon.

Since this is a novel strain of the Coronavirus, there is no herd immunity against it.

Moreover, it is a contagious virus affecting the respiratory system which spreads by the droplet method.

Government claims to take all preventive measures against Coronavirus, but India needs to be prepared better for such an epidemic