India braces for the brutal impact of the coronavirus

Cases of the COVID-19 coronavirus are rising sharply in India, and there are concerns as to whether the overpopulated country will be able to adequately cope, given their battered economy and flimsy healthcare system. With just over 1,050 cases and 29 deaths at the time of this writing, experts fear the actual tally could be significantly higher. Indian authorities say there’s no evidence of this and therefore have not ramped up testing. In other nations, the introduction of broader testing has given clarity to the scope of the pandemic.

As of March 29, India had only conducted 34,931 tests, which amounted to 19 tests per one million people. According to CNN, economist Arun Kumar said "more vigorous testing would help,” and “testing at a private hospital or lab in India costs 4,500 rupees ($60), while free tests in government hospitals are very limited.”

Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the government passed a $22.5 billion economic stimulus package that includes medical insurance to cover 5 million rupees ($66,451) per person for front-line workers such as nurses, doctors, paramedics, and cleaners in government hospitals. But coverage does not address those individuals who the sanitation worker is inevitably going to come into contact with.

Raju Kagada, a union leader of sanitation workers in Mumbai, said the stimulus package "may cover the sanitation worker but what about all the others who live around him in the slum and who are equally at risk of contracting the disease from him?”

The seriousness of this issue is not lost on the Modi's government, "which ordered the population of 1.3 billion people not to leave their homes for three weeks on March 24, initiating the world’s largest quarantine even as cases numbered only in the hundreds,” according to Bloomberg.

The overpopulation of India has in times past made it a hotbed for the spread of diseases. With 74 million people who live shoulder to shoulder in the country’s slums, social distancing and other preventative measures are physically and economically impossible. The vast majority of those living in the slums are forced to leave home to retrieve water, food, and toilet facilities every day. They have essentially been given an ultimatum of staying at home and starving or leaving home and putting themselves at extreme risk.

The ability to use the toilet is another issue, which forces many of the poor out of their homes. There is approximately 1 toilet for every 1,440 people living in the slums. And it has been reported that “78 percent of community toilets in Mumbai’s slums lack a water supply, according to a 2019 Greater Mumbai Municipal Corporation survey.” A recent study was conducted which explained that COVID-19 is expelled from the body through defecation, which all but guarantees that the contagion will spread rapidly if it penetrates the country’s most poor communities.

The governmental shelter-in-place orders have also created issues for migrant workers, who have been forced to return to their villages from the city. Because there are no businesses open, 45 million migrant workers are having to trek back home on foot due to the shutdown of public transportation, where some have to walk 370 miles with their families. The government has offered no financial assistance to these workers.

While Modi's government has decided to put medical professionals in 5-star hotels in an effort to prevent them from spreading the virus in their communities, they have also instituted a new penalty for those who violate the stay-at-home policy. According to The Times of India, Murari Lal Sharma said that those in Rajasthan who are found “flouting the lockdown orders will not be arrested and cane-charged by the police. We will use their services in sanitising the quarantine wards and taking care of the patients admitted in them.”