Are we inviting trouble again?

People flood the Poisar weekly market at Kandivli ahead of Diwali, on October 27. Pic/Satej Shinde

With Diwali shopping, socialising and events at their peak, mask and social distancing, compliance has hit new lows in India. Mask compliance has dropped drastically from 13% to only 2% in just one month. Compliance of social distancing has reduced by 50%, from 6% rating compliance high in September to 3% in October. These are the survey findings by Local Circles, which says only 16% of the citizens who travelled in October say mask compliance is effective while 96% say social distancing is not effective during travel; people say even large airports like Delhi and Mumbai are totally non-compliant on physical distancing.

So, with free-for-all everywhere, what will protect you from the fatal dangers of Covid-19? The answer is vaccination. But in Mumbai alone, the speed of vaccination dropped from 43,420 doses per day in September to 22,674 in October. Why is it so despite vaccines being available in surplus at the public and private centres? Some blame the drop in vaccination on a series of festivals and the prescribed gap between the two doses. It could be true to some extent, but not in entirety. The real fault lies with us. We have become complacent after the number of Covid-19 cases started dropping and more relaxations came into force. If taking all precautions is not possible, one can at least wear a mask when in the crowd. It is hard to find people carrying a bottle of sanitiser these days. If anyone carries a bottle and uses it at the shop counters, others give a piercing stare in disapproval of the opinion that the infection will not hit them anymore, because they believe there aren't infected persons around them in the streets, in markets, eateries, on the trains and at the densely crowded airports.

Let's go back to the period when the Covid-19 second wave was at its peak. The death toll mounted every day. The infrastructure did not suffice to cater to the surge in admissions. There wasn't a family that didn't lose a member, relative, friend, acquaintance and a person they knew just by name or face, to the deadly variant of the coronavirus. The unaffected were desperate to get inoculated. The fear of death took the Centre-decided beneficiaries to the vaccination centres. Soon, new age groups were made beneficiaries. The vaccine crunch hogged the headlines, with states and Centre sparring.

The Maharashtra government claimed to have created a daily jabbing capacity that no other state could match if given an adequate number of doses. The sparring continued even as the state steadily added a large number to the single and double vaccinated. The country celebrated a 100-crore mark. But in recent times, Mumbai and the rest of Maharashtra have received a discouraging response to the jabbing programme. Private centres had to shut. The public centres are rolling out a red carpet for the willing beneficiaries. Special drives are jabbing the college students. Mumbai's local administration has reduced the gap between two Covishield doses to 28 days for passport holders who plan to travel overseas. Government and private establishments have been told to impose penalties on the employees who don't wear masks. Suburban railways will allow only fully vaccinated commuters, be it the general public, the state employees or essential service workers.

While a few experts believe that a third wave is not likely in India, to some others this serves as a reminder of February-March 2021 when the daily caseload in India hit a low of 12,000 and people were socialising, travelling and had forgotten about the masking and social distancing norms, says Local Circles in a survey conducted in 366 districts pan-India. "What followed was a brutal second wave leading to daily caseloads higher than 400,000 with the actual caseload being significantly higher as the majority could not even access a Covid-19 test and went straight to the hospital for admission," it says.

The report notes that health experts have stated that there is a 90% risk of infection associated with two individuals not wearing a mask and not maintaining adequate physical distancing. The risk gets reduced to 30% if the uninfected person is wearing a mask. The office of the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government during the second wave, issued Covid-19 transmission details, highlighting that droplets and aerosol were the primary ways of transmission. It stated that droplets can fall within two metres from an infected person, while aerosols can be carried in the air up to 10 metres. This means the virus can quickly spread from a small number of people to a very large population if Covid-appropriate behaviours are not seriously taken, adds the report. Having nothing more to add, we would like to say that people should at least think of themselves and comply with Covid-19 protocol, unless told officially to abandon it. If they don't, they should think twice before questioning the overloaded healthcare system.

Dharmendra Jore is political editor, mid-day. He tweets @dharmendrajore
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