As of today, President Biden has issued an immediate ban against anyone traveling from India to the United States.
Health News
After willing itself into a false sense of security that it had largely avoided and even beaten the coronavirus pandemic, India has become the world’s epicenter of COVID cases and deaths. In fact, as of this past weekend, India broke the world record by reporting 400,000 new COVID cases.
In light of this news and after recommendations from the CDC, President Biden announced last Friday that he was left with no choice but to ban all travel from India to the US effective today.
To call the situation in the South Asian nation “dire” would be a grave understatement. India is now reporting at least 3,000 COVID deaths per day. Nepal has completely run out of hospital beds to treat the sick. However, most cities in the nation have totally run out of oxygen, making it impossible to treat the sick even if they had the available beds.
Now, India’s crematoriums are overwhelmed and have forced residents to build their own pyres to burn the dead throughout the day and night.
“Before the pandemic, we used to cremate eight to 10 people (daily),” said Jitender Singh Shunty, head of the Seemapuri crematorium in eastern New Delhi. “Now, we are cremating 100 to 120 a day.”
According to CNN, demand is so high that the Seemapuri crematorium has been forced to expand into its parking lot and construct new cremation platforms from bricks and mortar. With so little space and so many bodies, families must now get a ticket and wait in line to cremate their loved ones in accordance with Hindu custom.
So, exactly what went wrong in India?
Officials believe the nation declared victory over the virus much too soon, prompting a resurgence of the pandemic. Poor areas of India also have multiple families living nearly on top of each other in shanty shacks, where social distancing is an impossibility. Additionally, less than 2% of India’s 940 million adults have been fully vaccinated, which has left much of the nation vulnerable to infection. And, as if that wasn’t enough, India has a homegrown virus variant known as B.1.617, which some have blamed as responsible for the ferocious COVID second wave.
The US is racing millions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to assist the country in eradicating the virus and to prevent it from spreading to other parts of the world.
“We are in active conversations at high levels and plan to quickly deploy additional support to the Government of India and Indian health care workers as they battle this latest severe outbreak,” a White House spokeswoman said on Saturday.
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In light of this news and after recommendations from the CDC, President Biden announced last Friday that he was left with no choice but to ban all travel from India to the US effective today. […] – DJ
Yep. Except for those travelers from India who are “Exempt.”
As it is with most government policies that may sound like THIS is the responsible thing to do. When you read the actual policy, you discover that….well….”the devil is in the details.”