Q. COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented devastation worldwide. However, technological advancements are being availed readily to win over the crisis. Give an account of how technology was sought to aid management of the pandemic.
Ans:
Covid-19 pandemic is a far greater social, economic, and political phenomenon than merely a biomedical one. Due to its ability to spread rapidly and its ill-effects on lives and livelihood, the pandemic turned into one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent human history.
Caused unprecedented devastation worldwide:
- Economic:
- Most countries including India went into recession. The IMF estimates that the global economy shrunk by 4.4% in 2020. The organisation described the decline as the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
- Lockdown and restrictions affected the supply chains. Demand-supply gaps emerged.
- Stockpiling of essential commodities -> increase in Demand.
- There were crash in demand of non-essential goods.
- Global demand has also weakened
- GST collection and Tax collection decreased due to decline in business activity and lesser income made.
- According to ILO almost 1.6 billion informal economy workers are significantly impacted by lockdown measures. The earnings of informal workers are estimated to decline by 60 per cent globally due to the crisis.
- According to some estimates, more than 80 percent workers in the informal sector lost employment in India. Also, even where work is still available, there is likely continued loss of wages because working hours have decreased drastically.
- Political:
- suspensions of legislative activities,
- isolation or deaths of multiple politicians and
- reschedulings of elections due to fears of spreading the virus.
- Impact on federalism- e.g. tussle between centre and states in India.
- Social:
- migrant crisis, Increased Poverty, Increased food insecurity, closed educational institutions, overburdened healthcare system, domestic violence as shadow pandemic, disproportionate impact on the women.
- Worldwide more than 2.5 million people has died with covid-19 infection.
- Environment:
- biomedical wastes: significant rise in use of PPE, masks has created new biomedical waste crisis and posing a health risk to sanitation workers and garbage collectors. E.g. Over 40 sanitation workers have tested positive for COVID-19 and 15 have lost their lives in Delhi.
- Scientific research disrupted, International negotiations delayed, Less money for climate resilience and renewable energy etc.
Technology to aid management of the pandemic:
- The Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator is a pioneering international teamwork to fast-track development, production, and equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines.
- ‘Aarogya Setu’, a mobile app utilising Bluetooth technology, algorithms and artificial intelligence, was developed to bring the people of India together in a determined fight against COVID-19 and for tracking COVID-19 patients.
- PM Innovate challenge inviting applications from individuals, startups and companies to provide innovative technological solutions to fight the virus.
- Co-WIN or the Covid-19 Vaccine Intelligence Network, which is an extension of electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network (eVIN), is a digitalised tech platform for effectively rolling out and scaling up of the COVID Vaccine Distribution System mechanism at national level to reduce wastage and make the most effective use of vaccine supply and cold chain network.
- The Tata CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) test is considered the world’s first diagnostic test to bring into effective action a specially adapted Cas9 protein to successfully identify the virus causing Covid-19.
- Centre for Augmenting WAR with COVID-19 Health Crisis (CAWACH) initiative of Department of Science and Technology to extend timely support to potential start-ups by way of the requisite financial assistance and fund deployment targeting innovations to control COVID-19 that are deployable in the market within next 6 months.
- AI enabled MyGov Corona Helpdesk helped improve our outreach and engagement during the pandemic and made a marked difference to society.
- RT-PCR Test- identifies the presence of virus based on its genetic fingerprint.
- Rapid Antibody Detection Tests: It is helpful tool for scientist to determine the extent to which a disease has spread and how many have developed immunity to it.
- Indigenously ventilators were developed in India includes PRANA-VAYU, Ruhdaar etc.
- COVID-19 National Teleconsultation Centre (CoNTeC) is a Multi-modal Telemedicine Hub established by AIIMS, New Delhi, wherein expert doctors from various clinical domains will be available 24×7 to answer the multifaceted questions from specialists from all over the country for treatment of the COVID-19 patients.
- Dedicated TV and Radio Spots (English & Hindi) disseminating information and precautionary measures for public.
- CPCB’s biomedical wastetracking mobile application called COVID19BWM.
- PM eVIDYA initiative unifies all efforts related to digital/online/on-air education to enable multi-mode access to education. Similarly, DIKSHA, e-PATHSHALA platforms were used to ensure continued access to education.
Besides, implementable technologies related to searching of potential metabolite biomarker signature for COVID infection, developing antiviral surface coatings to prevent the spread of infections and development of antibody-based capturing of COVID-19 were other sought-after initiatives. ©crackingcivilservices.com
