In Part 1 of this post on Uttar Pradesh (UP), I introduced the people responsible for UP’s “Test, Track, and Treat” program and reviewed its evolution into the most pragmatic, comprehensive, and successful health system response to COVID in the world.

ONTO THE SECOND WAVE

As you can see below, after the “First Wave,” by January of 2021, India had “gone quiet,” given that COVID death rates per 100,000 plummeted across the country, with most states having very low rates of reported deaths as seen below to the far right of the graph (ending just before the Delta wave starts to form):

Then the new “Delta” variant began to escalate in Lahore, Pakistan in mid-February. A month later Delta began to escalate in the adjacent Punjab region of India and then onto nearby Delhi where the city started to get hammered. Delhi experienced the worst outbreak in the country, with 50% higher rates of death than its nearest neighboring city.