Journal of Microbiology and Infection

ABSTRACT

The global COVID-19 pandemic that descended upon humanity suddenly, spreading rapidly, has wreaked havoc and forced human civilization to a “new normal”. There is a paradigm shift and challenge to introspect and reorient our many taken-for-granted ideas and thoughts about life. Countries like Germany, France, and the UK, among others, having advanced healthcare facilities, saw a jump from 100 to 100,000 cases in less number of days compared to less privileged countries like India. According to Worldometers, the US, Spain, and Germany, respectively took 25, 30 and 35 days to cross the 100,000 tally [1].

At the early stage of the pandemic, the Indian government imposed the national lockdown, preventing most of the economic activities and prohibiting movement. The GDP growth fell to 4.2% in the fiscal 2019-20 and 3.1% in January-March 2020 [2]. This draconian nationwide closure, although it could not be controlled, delayed the transmission of the virus [3,4].

As the lockdown began, India had only 320 cases (mostly confined to a region), with 10 reported COVID-19 deaths in a more than 1.3 billion population. India became the 3rd worst-affected country, with around 20,000 new daily reported cases. The pandemic continued to spread exponentially, and the total infected cases was 10.35 million, with 9.93 million recovery cases and 1,49,000 deaths [4].

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