Tale of Covid-19 in two Indian cities: Dharavi, Mumbai, a rare success, and Delhi which was “messed up”

‘Asia's largest slum Dharavi was being seen as a 'Covid-engine' that will drive Mumbai in the wrong direction. But with conscious efforts, the slum's Covid doubling rate has come down to 44 days, twice as good as Mumbai’s 22. Delhi sadly is a study in contrast with India’s highest test positivity rates. In episode 496 of ThePrint's #CutTheClutter, Shekhar Gupta talks about the lessons from Dharavi & new plan for Delhi.’

Watch here (Youtube, June 14, 2020)

Kerala: An often overlooked region of India is a beacon to the world for taking on the coronavirus

‘KK Shailaja is the health minister in the Left Democratic Front government in Kerala, the state in the southwest of India that has a population of 35 million people. On January 25, 2020, she convened a high-level meeting to discuss the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China. What had particularly worried her is that there were many students from Kerala studying in that province of China.

‘Shailaja had won widespread praise for the swift and efficient way she had steered her department through the Nipah virus that hit Kerala in 2018. She recognised that there was no time to be lost if the virus spread from Wuhan; the government had to set up mechanisms for identifying possibly infected persons, and then for testing, mitigation, and treatment. On January 26, 2020, her department set up a control room to coordinate the work...’

Read here (Citizen Truth, March 24, 2020)

Past pandemics exposed China’s weaknesses: The current one highlights its strengths

‘...[The] audience for Xi’s performance is as much global as domestic. Just as in the past, whether in the time of SARS or of plague, outside observers are assessing China’s governance by its capacity to manage its health. COVID-19 has become an important test for the virtues of authoritarian governance versus those of citizen empowerment. Aware of this high-stakes diplomacy, China is reframing the narrative to emphasize the success of its mass-containment measures and downplay concerns about its initial failures. China has shared its expertise with the European Union, pledged $20 million to the WHO in its fight against the virus, dispatched medical teams and supplies to Iran, Iraq, Italy, and Serbia, and promised to help African countries meet the crisis. All at once, Xi has begun to look more like a global leader committed to health for all...

‘The new coronavirus has revealed a fractured geopolitical landscape and reactivated old arguments about openness and efficiency. The virus has laid bare China’s strongman leadership, but it has also highlighted incompetencies within Western democracies. As governments of democratic states impose sweeping quarantine measures, China is hoping that its draconian style of epidemic management will prevail as the new global norm.’

NOTE: There is a mention Wu Lien-Teh in this story. ‘In 1910, as Qing rule crumbled, the British-educated, Penang-born physician Wu Lien-teh was sent by the Chinese government to curtail the spread of pneumonic plague across Northeast China. He enacted stringent containment strategies based on modern scientific teachings: postmortems, bacteriological investigations, and mass cremations, to name a few. Wu’s program was markedly different from the response to the bubonic plague just two decades prior, when endeavors to halt the contagion were left to local charitable organizations or to the foreign officials who staffed the Imperial Maritime Customs Service with minimal oversight from the viceroy at Canton.’

Read here (Foreign Affairs, March 7, 2020)