This is how the coronavirus affects India and its economy

These are grim statistics for India these days. On August 30, 78,761 new corona infections were noted in the country, a higher number than any other country had experienced in one day.

It is a record number that India has exceeded time and time again. On September 6, more than 95,735 new infections were discovered. India now has a total of 4.3 million cases, only the United States has more.

It can be compared with China. The country where it all began, a country with 1.4 billion inhabitants compared to 1.3 billion in India.

China has so far more than 85,000 cases of corona infection. Total. As many as India discover it today.

No one can accuse Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of not taking corona infection seriously from the start. The problem is, you probably reacted too quickly.

It was on March 24 at 8pm that Modi closed India. Everything happened a few hours in advance.

There were very strong measures in a country that then only had about 600 cases of corona. And that posed huge problems for India’s large number of poor people and migrant workers who literally make a living from their daily work.

Suddenly, workplaces were closed. Instead, millions went to their hometowns.

The shutdown lasted more than two months and restrictions still apply in some locations. Schools, for example, are still closed.

But India has reopened. The problem is that the restrictions began to decrease as the infection began to spread in earnest.

And although the virus was initially concentrated in major cities like Mumbai, it is now spreading mainly in rural areas. The state of Kerala was initially praised for its successful fight, but even there, cases have risen sharply as migrant workers returned home.

All of this is ominous. This is what Dr. Harjit Singh Bhatti, a physician at Manipal Hospital in New Delhi, tells The Guardian.

– Rural areas have experienced significantly less investment in health care. They are poorly equipped, there are fewer doctors. The spread of the virus will have dire consequences and we will likely see significantly higher death rates.

So far, mortality in India has been significantly lower than in other heavily affected countries, such as the United States and Brazil (and Sweden). India has 53 deaths per million inhabitants, compared to 599 in the United States and 577 in Sweden.

It is believed that one of the reasons is that the population of India is so young. Only five percent are over 65 years old, while more than half are under 25. It is mainly the elderly who have died from covid-19.

But India has suffered much worse than other major countries in one important area: the economy. During the second quarter, the country’s GDP declined by a whopping 23.9 percent.

The US economy contracted 9.3 percent during the same period. And China? Yes, China returned to having positive figures in the second quarter.

“This is probably the worst situation that India has been in since independence,” economist Jayati Ghosh of Nehru University in New Delhi told the New York Times.

This in a country that a few years ago had growth figures even higher than China. Then there was an optimism, which is now like dazzled. At the same time, ethnic tensions are increasing in the country.

And amid all of this, the coronavirus is spreading like never before.

“Many people now feel that it is better to contract the virus than to stay home and be hungry,” Thekkekara virus expert Jacob John told the New York Times.

In cities, many factories are now paralyzed because orders have disappeared and many of the workers are missing. Some workers have returned from the fields, but even more choose to stay in the villages to which they have returned.

“We were hungry for days,” Mohammed Chand told the New York Times. I had to go from place to place after the owner kicked me out. Even my relatives started kicking us out.

– I don’t want to experience it again.

So far, however, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is popular in the polls. He was re-elected last year and his policy of tightening legislation against the country’s Muslim minority has been popular with many Hindus.