*Roslina Abdul Latif & Nur Haniz Mohd Nor
Abstract:
In the recent wake of the novel coronavirus outbreak, countries around the world have suffered greatly in terms of economy, health, and loss of lives. To date (5 July 2021), there have been more than 184,562,051 cases, with 3,993,319 deaths and around 168,907,181 recoveries. Not a single country has been spared; India included with 30.5 million cases, 402,000 deaths and 29.7 million recoveries. India is a vast country that has undergone and survived the onslaught of many viruses and epidemics. From the Black Death, Blue Death, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), dengue and chikungunya fever, meningococcal disease, Japanese encephalitis (JE), avian influenza, Nipah virus and now, COVID-19, India has seen and experienced it all. The country saw the first spike of COVID-19 cases at the beginning of March 2020 with 50 cases recorded daily and by the end of March, the lockdown which was imposed by the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi had been extended five times as the country awaits the number of cases to reach its peak, and then hopefully, a plateau. This paper looks at the string of major pandemics and viruses that have hit this country, the global alerts and responses, the impacts and number of lives lost to all these catastrophes and the rise of pandemic-related misinformation.
Keywords: Epidemiology, epidemics, India, COVID-19, pandemics