COVID-19 pandemic in India

Zirpe, Kapil; Gurav, Sushma

India being the most populous country had to tailor made its approaches to tackle the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Public health expenditure in India is just above 1% of gross domestic product. The warning signs of pandemic arrival in India were knocking our health-care system since the first few cases surfaced in Kerala. Social distancing as a method of keeping the virus at bay was first officially flagged by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 19 in order to call for a 1-day “Janata Curfew” on March 22. The Epidemic Disease Act was implemented, and special task force was developed to draft guidelines for personal hygiene, surveillance, contact tracing, quarantine, diagnosis, laboratory tests, and the management of COVID-19. The Aarogya Setu app was developed to alert the public about COVID-19 symptoms, contact tracing, and the nearest contact of health-care center. We need to strive to extricate our country from this situation as advised by Krishna, “Uddharet Atmanatmanam—a person has to lift himself up; a man is his own best friend as also enemy.”