World Bank offers $1bn for COVID-19 India Emergency

The World Bank has offered USD one billion to the Indian government for a proposed India COVID-19 emergency response and health systems preparedness project. The four-year project aims to develop the preparedness of India’s health care systems in the time of the pandemic.

The idea of the project will be to respond and mitigate the COVID-19 threat and strengthen national systems for public health preparedness in India, as per the project document.

The World Bank funding is from its COVID-19 fast-track facility where both the entities (World Bank and the government of India) will work on following the best international practice.

The project will measure progress on key indicators such as proportion of laboratory-confirmed cases of the disease which responded within 48 hours and the proportion of specimens submitted for SARS-COV-2 laboratory testing confirmed within WHO stipulated standard time.

According to the project document, the government assessment seems to be that outbreaks like COVID-19 will continue in coming years, and hence there needs to be a long-term strategy to tackle the next wave of the disease.