Abstract

Last year, India went into a national lockdown with 500 cases. A year later, despite a lower RT of 1.65, multiple super spreader events and poor compliance of appropriate behaviour, have resulted in the ongoing devastation around us. Data as number of tests conducted, the positivity rate, daily active cases, recovery and fatality rate are essential to know which way the pandemic is moving, and forecasting and gauging outbreaks. Institutions like ICMR & NCDC should have complete autonomy to run a combined response against Covid-19, along with access to Indian researchers. States should be held accountable for silent or poor reporting of figures. Urgent ramping up of genomic sequencing for early detection of variants must be prioritised. This enables the government to rework on the preventive strategies based on the newer strains. Further through the utilisation of the expertise of WHO-National Polio Surveillance Project and UNICEF better vaccination coverage can be achieved. The talk will focus on how the country can benefit from a data-driven approach to handle public health problems.

Bio