US ANNOUNCES $2.9 MILLION ASSISTANCE FOR INDIA TO TACKLE COVID-19

The United States government announced that they would be providing India with a $2.9
million assistance package in order to help the Indian government prepare laboratory systems,
activate case-finding and event-based surveillance, and support technical experts for response and preparedness.

This will help India combat the deadly virus which has taken thousands of lives around the world. As India is still in the initial stages and under a lockdown, the total cases in India stand a little above 1200 and have continued to grow, looking at other countries such as Italy and the United States, who have a smaller population and better health facilities compared to India and hence India poses a larger threat from this virus.

According to experts the most effective way to stop the spread of this virus is to have social distancing because the virus can spread easily from person to person. However, the World Health Organisation believes that to contain the virus all countries need to increase the number of tests and put the victims of this virus under medical care and isolation, because if they stay out in the society they may spread the virus.

The assistance concentrates on increasing the number of test kits for Covid-19 among other things. The increase in the test kits means that the government will now be able to test more individuals and hence will find more people who have been affected by the virus and who may not have been found if the number of kits would have been lesser and they would have been left out. Hence, the increase in the number of test kits may help save the lives of the victims of the virus as well as of all those people who would have been affected in the society if they came in contact with that individual. Hence by consuming these test kits the benefit gained by the individual is far less than the benefit gained by the society, making this a positive production externality.

image- dnaindia.com

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