over 3 years ago

'How will I cope if I fall sick?': In India, COVID-19 spares no one

The sound of the waves crashing on สล็อต rocks and the echoing crows' caws punctuate an otherwise silent world on the city's seafront.

There's not a soul in sight.

I am not used to having this part of Mumbai to myself, but a lockdown has forced almost everyone indoors during the deadly second wave of infections. As a journalist, I fall under the category of "essential worker" and the guidelines allow me to venture out to do my job.

It's rare to see a city of 20 million inhabitants stop moving. But watching the stillness, a sense of deja vu washes over me. This is what happened a year ago during India's nationwide COVID-19 lockdown, one of the strictest in the world.

Then, the virus was unfamiliar territory and many of Mumbai's residents were scared to leave their homes. For those who felt stifled and tried to move around the city, police checkpoints greeted them at every corner.

As months went by and restrictions eased, the pandemic didn't seem so frightening, and people resumed their work and social lives. They gathered at bars and went to massive weddings teeming with hundreds of guests.

"People got tired of following restrictions and living their life being caged," a doctor tells me. Now, his life is dominated by a deluge of COVID-19 patients, peppered incessantly around the clock by calls from people asking for help.

"They started taking the coronavirus lightly," he says, adding that the current situation was completely preventable. He tells me: India's government failed to prepare.

Many, including the authorities, thought India had beaten the virus.

While I followed COVID-19 guidelines, I had adjusted to the pandemic and had become somewhat comfortable with the situation. In recent months, I was travelling to homes, offices and crowded markets to report.

During balmy evenings, I would meet friends at the racecourse for dinner. Sitting on the open-air lawns, we watched workers dismantling a sprawling, barely-used COVID-19 field hospital built at the venue during the first wave.

But as the second wave hit and cases soared in Mumbai and the wider state of Maharashtra - the worst-hit in terms of number of infections - the local government started to introduce curbs, which were steadily tightened until a lockdown was in place.