The All India People’s Science Network has called for ramping up testing, tracing, isolating and treating infected persons
Team Clarion
NEW DELHI — The Modi government has drawn massive public criticism for its inability to handle the current wave of coronavirus which has wreaked havoc as India recorded more than 2,00,000 cases on the second consecutive day.
Experts have said that the government must take responsibility for the situation and stop blaming people for not adhering to the Covid-19 protocol.
A statement by a network of health experts and scientists, All India People’s Science Network on Wednesday said that blaming people and states for the crises “serves only to enable the Centre to evade responsibility for the present situation and give itself an excuse for future inaction or failure.”
The Union Health Ministry has cited report by government’s health teams from worst-hit Maharashtra and Punjab to argue that people have been showing laxity towards coronavirus which has led to the ongoing situation.
On Thursday, India reported 200,739 new coronavirus cases bringing the active Covid-19 patients to 1.47 million, 40% more than the highest peak seen during first wave in September 2020. Experts say the second wave is more brutal than the previous one when the entire country was put under strict lockdown for months.
The network said that the authorities should learn from the experience of the first wave and take measures through a partnership between the Centre and states, based on evidence. The Centre should not make “efforts to shift blame to states while withholding essential supplies.” Epidemiological data and further analysis is required to arrive at any firm conclusions as to reasons behind this second wave, and precautions required to be taken in the future, the statement added.
The experts said that due to lack of sufficient data it was difficult to draw conclusions on the impact of the new variants of the virus and underlined the need for expanded gene sequencing across the country and co-relating findings with data to work out mitigation strategies.
While criticizing the contact tracing and Arogya Seetu app aspect of the government response to the first wave, the scientists appealed for ramping up testing, tracing, isolating and treating infected persons. “Testing needs to be ramped up significantly with emphasis on RT-PCR tests so as to uncover infections more quickly,” the statement said, adding decentralized evidence-based approaches with community participation would be most effective.
The network asked the authorities to plug holes in the ongoing vaccination drives so that it reaches all classes and also appealed for scaling up vaccine production and availability.
“Total production by Serum Institute of India (SII) and Bharat Biotech, while high by the former is below even current vaccination rates, leave alone an expanded vaccination drive. Therefore, the Government needs to urgently take steps to boost manufacturing capacity,” read the statement.
The network of scientists urged the government to not give into calls for stopping commercial and aid-based export of vaccines to other countries to meet domestic needs. “It would be cruel and immoral to weaken or close down this endeavour in an extremely selfish display of vaccine nationalism, and that too for very little benefit. This is a record to be proud of, not condemned.”
