Up to a few weeks ago, In­dia was a bea­con in the fight against COVID-19. Its num­bers were de­clin­ing and its gen­er­ous vac­cine diplo­ma­cy ben­e­fit­ted over 90 coun­tries, in­clud­ing us in T&T.

To­day, sad­ly, the world’s sec­ond-most pop­u­lous coun­try is where COVID-19 is spread­ing the fastest, pre­sent­ing us with a les­son that can’t be ig­nored.

The coun­try was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing big gains. With a pop­u­la­tion of 1.36 bil­lion, in mid-Sep­tem­ber, In­dia had been see­ing around 93,000 new cas­es per day. How­ev­er, by mid-Feb­ru­ary, this dropped sig­nif­i­cant­ly to around 11,000 and the sev­en-day rolling av­er­age of dai­ly deaths slid be­low 100. So op­ti­mistic were the au­thor­i­ties, Health Min­is­ter Harsh Vard­han an­nounced in ear­ly March that In­dia was at its “endgame.”

But, just a few weeks lat­er, hos­pi­tals are to­day over­whelmed, the health­care sys­tem is crum­bling and the coun­try has seen a record 332,000 new cas­es in just one day, with 2,767 peo­ple dy­ing from the virus on Sat­ur­day. New strains have emerged, in­clud­ing a dou­ble mu­tant strain, mor­tu­ar­ies are over­flow­ing and there are two pa­tients in beds in some hos­pi­tals.

In­dia has now put a hold on all ex­ports of the As­traZeneca vac­cine as dos­es are des­per­ate­ly need­ed there. It is a se­ri­ous warn­ing to the en­tire world of the grim re­sult of let­ting one’s guard down.

In­dia’s Pub­lic Health Foun­da­tion pres­i­dent K Sri­nath Red­dy, at­trib­uted the rapid demise to what he called “a feel­ing of tri­umphal­ism,” adding the few voic­es of cau­tion were not heed­ed to.

At the end of Feb­ru­ary, key elec­tions were an­nounced in five states where 186 mil­lion were el­i­gi­ble to vote and there were mas­sive crowds at cam­paigns with lit­tle so­cial dis­tanc­ing. By mid-March, 130,000 fans watched two crick­et games be­tween In­dia and Eng­land, and mil­lions gath­ered for the fes­ti­vals of Kumbh Mela and Holi in March and April.

In short, the drop in cas­es cou­pled with In­dia’s po­si­tion as the world’s largest vac­cine-mak­er gave many a tri­umphant feel­ing and they re­turned to the types of be­hav­iours that make the virus flour­ish.

Here in T&T, the script is al­most the same on a small­er scale. Cas­es had dropped sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the first few months of this year and vac­cines were fi­nal­ly com­ing in, though small in num­ber. As a re­sult, un­guard­ed cit­i­zens felt the worst was over and lax be­hav­iours be­gan to spread. We now face a spike, with hun­dreds of new cas­es and sev­er­al deaths in the last cou­ple of weeks.

Health­care of­fi­cials are warn­ing that in­ten­sive care units are fill­ing up and that the dis­cov­ery of the high­ly trans­mis­si­ble Brazil vari­ant can se­vere­ly im­pact us if we do not take the right pre­cau­tions.

It is a call for re­newed vig­i­lance and an ap­peal for the preva­lence of good sense, again.

In­dia’s bea­con is but a light­house to­day, warn­ing of dan­gers ahead for those main­tain­ing sail­ing off the char­tered course.

We re­main grate­ful for their kind­ness and of­fer them our sin­cer­est sup­port and prayers.

But we must al­so learn from their mis­takes and avoid the pit­falls they’ve ex­pe­ri­enced by keep­ing our guards up.

Un­til we tru­ly achieve herd im­mu­ni­ty and the spread be­comes neg­li­gi­ble, our vig­i­lance must con­tin­ue.