India's covid-19 catastrophe is a failure of national and global public health and policy response to the pandemic

The horrendous second wave of covid-19 in India, home to nearly a fifth of the world’s population, has engulfed the vast nation in death, despair, and despondency. The graphic scenes of suffering, people dying for lack of oxygen and medical care amid a shortage of medications and basic amenities, coupled with mass cremations and burials, grieving families, over-stretched healthcare workers, and sheer human helplessness is hard to watch. India is already recording nearly 400,000 reported cases per day (the actual number may be eight to ten-fold higher), and some models project the numbers may rise to 800,000 or even a million cases per day and 5-10,000 deaths per day by mid- or late-May.