Covid-19: Winds of Change

 How things change in one year!

At the beginning of 2021 everybody seemed perplexed that the much anticipated first wave of Covid-19 had somehow swept past India without causing much damage. 'The virus cannot survive the pollution levels here!', sniggered the wags and carried on with their lives. 

People were just beginning to take it easy when the second wave - the Delta variant - blindsided us in March 2021. Suddenly all the hospitals were struggling to cope with a deluge of patients and distraught families. Just about everybody seemed to be desperately looking for oxygen cylinders, medicines, oxygen concentrators and reliable test kits. By July, nearly half a million people had died on the official records with speculation rife on the scale of unreported deaths.

When Delta gave way to Omicron there was much talk on how the healthcare system had been geared up to meet the challenge. Skeptical as always, I thought this was bluster - just the sort of pep-talk expected from politicians to keep a lid on panic levels. It took a first-hand experience for me to realise how wrong I was!

We started 2022 on a positive note from our RTPCR test labs. It had started with a throat irritation and telltale signs of a fever. When a number of friends who attended a Christmas party started testing Covid-positive, we knew that ours was not the winter usual viral. The tests only confirmed this but what surprised me is the way in which the healthcare system had actually been geared up to cope with this new wave.

Within an hour of calling a private testing lab (SRL), a sample collector was at our doorstep (~INR 900 / ~USD 12 per test). The RTPCR reports arrived online a day later, on a Saturday. It is mandatory for the private labs to send a copy of the reports to the state health department also gone to the UP government health department, and we were pleasantly surprised to see how the SoPs clicked into place. 

On Monday morning a young government doctor visited us to collect first-hand data, to check if home-isolation was being strictly followed, and to hand over free kits of medicines. A team was sent across to spray and disinfect the apartment tower and, for the next week, we got at least one call a day from the 'Central Covid Control Room' to check if the infection had aggravated in any way. Thankfully, it did not. The infection was as mild as it could be - fever for a day, a sore-throat for two.

As per the new guidelines, at the end of a seven-day isolation period, it is no longer mandatory to take another RTPCR test but we  got tests done anyway using the new Rapid Antigen Tests that were now easily available on Amazon. Interestingly, these tests were no longer being imported from Germany, South Korea or China but made locally by a company called MyLab and sold for just INR 250 (~ USD 3.5) each. Clearly a lot of thought has gone into the design and production of these kits, each of which contains a sterile swab, a pre-filled extraction tube, test-card, instruction manual (English/Hindi) and a disposal pouch. 

One of these days I hope to understand more about the kind of technology and production systems that it takes to prototype and scale up production of these kits ("with immunochromatographic nitrocellulose assay...which uses highly sensitive antibodies to detect Covid-19 nucleocapsid proteins.."), to the current levels of 10 million sets per week!

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/23/coronavirus-how-india-is-doing-now-after-delta-variant-spread.html

* MyLab - wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mylab_Discovery_Solutions#cite_note-1

* Pune start-up makes affordable, accessible Covid-19 test kit (March 2020) - https://www.financialexpress.com/lifestyle/health/pune-start-up-makes-affordable-accessible-covid-19-test-kit/1908524/

* Producing 10 million kits per week - https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/indias-mylab-can-ramp-up-covid-19-test-production-100-mln-units-per-week-ceo-2021-05-21/

How Sweet!

Sugarcane is just a variety of grass. I love to dig my teeth into them but whatever else I knew was pretty basic – the slave-trade once thrived on it; to cultivate this crop, thousands of indentured laborers had been shipped from India to the West Indies - including the ancestors of V.S. Naipaul.

But what is story behind the jar of sugar that sits on my kitchen shelf? I knew next to nothing until I read today morning, a paper written by Harish Damodaran & Harvir Singh, titled “Sugar Industry in UP: Rise, Decline & Revival”,

Harish works with the Businessline and specializes on the Agri-Business sector. In his articles he never intimidates you with arcane formulae and statistical analysis. The approach is WYSIWYG - simple and direct , and this article was no different.

It looks at the topic in three parts –Historical Evolution; 1990s and After, and Socio-Economic Impact. Here are some pearls –

· If it were not for a protectionist colonial government, there would have been no Indian Sugar Industry. In 1932, an ad valorem duty of 185% effectively blocked sugar imports from Java. Within five years sugar factories shot up from 29 to 137!

· During the License-Permit Raj (1960-80), the cooperatives in Maharashtra surpassed UP. And then, in August 1998, the industry was full de-licensed. Distance between mills reduced from 40km to 15km; Economies of scale - new factories to have minimum capacity of 2,500 tcd; Dilution of “sugar levy” – govt share reduced from 45% to 10%…they could now sell 90% of production to open market

· Two international developments also helped: skyrocketing oil prices and the forced phase-out of subsidies on sugar exports by the European Union (EU). Big producers like Brazil started diverting sugarcane to Ethanol production.

· In 2005-06, India produced 19.26 million tones of sugar. UP topped the list at 5.7mT, followed by Maharashtra at 5.1mT

· Production: A typical mill recovers about 10 tonnes of sugar from every 100 tonnes of sugarcane that it crushes. 30 tonnes of bagasse and 4.5 tonnes of molasses generated as byproducts. The bagasse can produce power and the molasses, alcohol.

· Sugar one of the few industries that is completely energy self-sufficient and not dependent on coal or other external fuel sources.

· Thanks to more efficient boilers, for every 30 tonnes of bagasse, there is 8-9 tonnes surplus available for mills to sell -- especially to paper and particle-board makers.

· One tonne of cane makes 100kg of sugar. In addition, it also produces 100 units of power and 9.9 litres of alcohol. Thus Sugarcane yields not just sugar, but also alcohol, commercial energy and paper. As well as fodder for cattle and buffaloes.

· Water-guzzler? Not really. Sugarcane, requires 8-10 irrigations, compared to say, 4-6 in the case of wheat. But then, cane is typically grown over 11 months, whereas wheat is only a 4 - month crop.

· C-4 photosynthesis: Sugarcane uses a more efficient solar energy-deploying mechanism for capturing atmospheric carbon-dioxide and water and converting into starch matter or sugar / biomass. This is unlike rice, wheat, groundnut and several other plant species that employ the less efficient ‘C-3’ photosynthetic pathway.

· A modern sugal mill today generates direct jobs for 700-800 people; irrigated cane crop gives a net yearly return of Rs 18,000 to Rs 24,000 per acre.