With the second wave of COVID-19 hitting India and many parts of the World, the number of daily cases have taken a usurious turn. While the first wave was pernicious for the elderly, the second is putative to affect the adults and children with unsubstantiated research - given the mutants developing so quickly. Never before had the modern World - beginning reference to the onset of Industrial Revolution-, faced such a disease throughout its Geography. While there have been pandemics affecting many parts of the globe in the past, they did not affect the entire World. Over the time, the population increased, so did the medical infrastructure, but not in proportion to the population. The economic race marred the very purpose of a healthy society - bombs became prior to medicines and medical facilities. How the number of hospital beds throughout the World have changed is aptly presented at the below link: (Please use the slider below the image to compare the timeline of number of hospital beds through out the World)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/hospital-beds-per-1000-people
In addition to above, presented below is a calculative and seemingly suggestive study on how the World as a whole needs to come together to eradicate COVID-19 and save the humanity from what could be a grim future - given the number of mutants the virus is capable of developing into and rendering vaccines void.
The link below refers to a published study by National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), USA, and is an initiative to seek insights into the number of Hospital Beds (HBs), Acute Care Beds (ACBs) and Intensive Care Units (ICUs) throughout the World. While the data is not available for many Saharan, Sub-Saharan and other African countries which lack far behind in medical facility numbers, their population would not be left out while doing the final calculations.
The report considers a total of 183 countries - high income and low income countries inclusive. Below is the link to the published report:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7685049/
The above report (published April 2021) calculated that there is a mean of 307.1 HBs, 413.9 ACBs and 8.73 ICU beds per 100,000 persons throughout the World. The report has considered a number of factors to be as accurate as possible and hence can be a standard for performing the final calculations below:
Considering the report, for the mildly affected patients, approximately (307.1 + 413.9) beds are available. Above assumes that mild patients require hospitalization and not intensive care. As per the aforementioned, there are total ~720 beds/100,000 mild COVID patients. For the total population of the World - including African countries, there are ((7.6Bn/100,000) * 720 = 54,720,000) beds available, if all the people are mildly affected.
Doing the same calculation for the critically ill patients who require urgent attention and intensive care, the number of ICU beds for the total population of the World - including African countries, if severely critical would be ((7.6 Bn/100,00) * 7.83 = 663,480 ICU beds).
As of 20 April 2021 - while this report is being prepared - the total statistics of COVID-19 hitherto stands as:
Total Cases: 142,527,318
Total Recovered: 120,956,463
Total Deaths: 30,39,056
Active Cases: 18,531,799
- in Mild Condition: 18,423,893 (99.4%)
- critical : 107,906 (0.6%)
At the hour, there are more ICU beds freely available through out the World than there are critical COVID-19 patients and far more ACB and HB beds freely available than there are mild COVID-19 patients. Shocking.
While the above calculation suggests a far positive picture of the overall situation, it does not take into account the amount of overall expenditure to be done by the Governments throughout the World. As it seems, the expenditure still would not be able to beat what the Governments would do otherwise.
This can be very vociferously opined to be a failure on the part of World Health Organization - which has been a bystander since the beginning of COVID-19. Other international organizations, though not equally, but are partly responsible as well for the grim picture today.
Cooperating on the medical facilities, medical research has been one of the primer agreement in mutual treaties by nations across the globe. While the time now is right to collaborate, the Governments through out the World are being self centered, brazenly taking decisions affecting the economy and pauperizing their populace.
The report is inconclusive in the fact that the numbers and figures presented are ever changing, and more so, in these unprecedented times. But, to conclude, the onus of eradicating global pandemics lies not on individual nations' capacities but the humanity as a whole. Wise, over-sought decisions need to be taken at a global level - chaired by WHO in its discretion. The humanity has a lot to offer, it remains how we utilize it efficiently and effectively.
For the better future. O Lord!
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