Covid-19 Updates

After India’s devastating covid wave in April-May 2021, the case numbers gradually fell as vaccination efforts surged. There were a few more mini-waves, in November and in January, 2022. After which, it seemed life might return to normal. Medically speaking, it did. Hospitals were no longer overrun with covid cases. E.R. wards were free to handle routine emergencies (injuries, heart attacks, strokes, etc.). Patients with non-emergency needs (elective surgeries, checkups, etc.) replaced the earlier droves of covid patients.

 

But economically, things have remained grim. All across the nation, a great many construction projects, halted in March 2020, have yet to resume. Skeletal frames of partially-built structures languish in the heat and rains. Price increases, caused by lockdown-era supply-chain backlogs combined with extreme inflation due to the Russian assault on Ukraine, have gut-punched the poor. The prices of even basic staples, like rice, have more than tripled. Many of our friends and neighbors are near starvation: trying to survive on small portions of rice and salt each day.

Many of our people spend over eight hours per day waiting in lines, hoping to get work: as daily laborers, road sweepers…anything. Most don’t get hired. Compounding the problems are the new covid sub-variants (BA.4 and BA.5) sweeping the world. This is spawning new fears in India, especially in three states where several of our centers are. Hospitals across these states are preparing to become “covid-only” facilities if needed.

Health authorities have good reason for alarm. In 2020 and ’21 hospital staffs across the land experienced horrors for months on end, as their facilities were overrun with dying covid patients. Due to these compounded problems, we have stepped up assistance in meeting our people’s basic grocery needs. We screen people carefully, avoiding would-be freeloaders. The people we help are in genuine and dire need.