India Must Spend More To Combat Outbreaks Such As Covid-19 In Future

With an unexpected spike in COVID-19 cases, India has extended the countrywide lockdown till May 17, 2020. The move reflects India’s dependency on lockdown to contain the pandemic amid poor healthcare spending and infrastructure, says data and analytics company GlobalData.

According to GlobalData COVID-19 dashboard, as of May 4, although India has 42,505 confirmed cases, fatality rate in India was 3.27% versus 7.06% worldwide, 5.59% in China and 5.84 % in the USA. As of May 3, GlobalData forecasts 10,177,238 confirmed COVID-19 cases in India in a high transmission risk scenario versus 132,388 in a low transmission risk scenario by the end of two weeks from now on May 14.

“The COVID-19 pandemic shows the need for healthcare system bootstrap in India, as the country is unable to raise the healthcare spending by more than 3.8% of GDP [gross domestic product], as compared to the APAC average of 6.64%, even though the country stands at the top in out-of-pocket expenditure with 62.40%,” says GlobalData’s pharma analyst Bhavani Nelavelly.

“While India has shown a steady increase in healthcare budget allocation, it is still very low in comparison to the other nations with India standing 170 out of 188 countries in domestic general government health expenditure as a percentage of GDP as per the Global Health Expenditure database 2016 of WHO.”

Lockdown may not be the lasting solution for containing virus spread, as it will flare up again after the lifting of lockdown. While the lockdown helped the government to prepare for adequate measures, the extension of lockdown is said to cause $234.4 billion economic loss and result in a stagnant GDP for fiscal year 2020. To compensate for the economic losses, India has already initiated tentative steps to resume the economy with some relaxation given to limited industrial activities.

India still well down in terms of testing

Though India expanded testing facilities, the country still stands at the bottom compared to rest of the countries in world with respect to testing done as the testing ratio is 760 subjects per million. India has tested 11,07,233 samples as of May 4, with the first case reported on January 30. The numbers will certainly rise if the testing sample increases, and unless there is extensive testing, the actual extent of problem cannot be understood.

Mr Nelavelly concludes: “As per the current number of confirmed cases, India is not among the worst-hit countries. However, low sample testing, grossly under-funded and patchy public health system pose special challenges for the country’s disease containment strategy. India has already increased the funds to fight against COVID-19 by granting $1.97 billion for ‘India COVID-19 emergency’ but that is not enough, the country needs a robust healthcare system and infrastructure to combat the outbreaks like this, which can only be done by strengthening the ability of health-care systems to provide comprehensive care through increase in the health expenditure by government.”

-The Pharma Letter