THE FESTIVE SEASON CHALLENGE

For the past few days, officials at the ministry of health and family welfare have been breathing a little easier. After months of dealing with critical shortages—of beds, doctors and trained personnel—keeping up with shape-shifting Covid symptoms, treatments that seemed to work and then not, and the challenges of contact tracing in a country of over a billion people, the Covid curve has, at long last, begun its decline. From its all-time high of 97,000 daily cases on September 11, India logged 63,000 cases on October 13, down further to 45,000 on October 19.

However, doctors and bureaucrats are wary