COVID-19 IS A NEW ANIMAL IN THE ZOO

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Focus: GS-III Science and Technology, Disaster Management

Co-chair of the Empowered Committee for COVID-19 Response, India, Dr. V.K. Paul said the changed circumstances of the spread of the disease called for a revised testing strategy and marshalling all resources to contain the pandemic.
He also indicated that India is close to rolling out a simpler, indigenous testing kit for the virus.
COVID-19 is a new animal in the zoo – meaning we are still understanding the virus.

We have been containing it to a large extent but the way these things pan out, emerging scenarios are unpredictable and can be very serious, so let us put our act together.
This has the potential to become an outbreak and become bigger and we cannot rule that out.
India so far has been in a reasonably good shape and we have not seen any deaths which are unexplained.
COVID-19 is a new animal in the zoo, we are still understanding the virus that hasn’t seen a full cycle of season, so cannot say conclusively how it will behave.

It is no secret that that India’s health infrastructure needs to be augmented and that we need to double of patients-bed and patient-medical staff ratio.
We are evolving as country and we have been emphasising the need to increase of healthcare foot print from Tier 2 to Tier 3 cities.
We should have a much stronger and much bigger and much more competent health system and that journey has many more milestones to be achieved.

Currently States across India have been instructed to marshal all their resources to ensure that we are able to contain the virus.
They have been asked to use all legal and emergency powers and funds to cater to any medical situation that may come about.
It is a situation for which you have to pull out all stops and get makeshift arrangements if need be.
So far India has remained relatively safe, but we need to be aware and prepared.

This one-day bandh is the only way we can cut down or dent transmission.
That’s the good, old way things work, when we don’t have a medicine, we don’t have the vaccine, you have to make sure that it doesn’t pass on to the next person.
While we cannot create a perfect situation so social distancing is key and this drill is essential.

We are looking at two types of technologies/products — one is diagnostic kits and the other, of course, is vaccine which is a long term solution.
We are very close to making available a simpler and indigenous diagnostic test.
There are 4 to 6 very promising options being carried out and we are very close to an early validation and early scale up.
Vaccine pipeline will be about eight months to a year or more.
If vaccine comes out somewhere else, they may find it very sensible to manufacture here in India.