‘May be able to push peak until there is vaccine’

NEWDELHI:The challenge for India will be to strike a balance between managing the industrial impact and heath impact of Covid-19, says Dr Raman R Gangakhedkar, who retired as the Indian Council of Medical Research’s (ICMR) head of epidemiology and non-communicable diseases. Excerpts:

You moved to ICMR headquarters in Delhi in 2018; how was the experience?

I can’t tell how the experience was because I never got time to think. I was firefighting for 2.5 years. When I joined in 2018, Nipah outbreak struck in Kerala; then a highly contagious Canine Distemper Virus disease outbreak happened in Gir; then Zika outbreak in 2019...; and then Covid-19 happened.

What has your experience been like while dealing with Covid-19 so far? What did we do right?

What has worked in India’s fight against Covid-19 is that there has been involvement of all stakeholders together from the very beginning. We have seen in the past that multi-sectoral response in an outbreak situation usually comes so late that much of the damage is already done. But in this case, from the most senior officials to the junior- most functionaries, everyone came together much early when there was lots that could be done to save the situation from going out of hand and that led to early lockdown. We bought so much time and prepared ourselves much better.

What challenges do you foresee?

The biggest challenge will be to achieve the balance between industrial impact vs. health impact of Covid-19. You have to take certain steps for the economy but at the same time be very cautious to not let the disease spiral out of control. India is a diverse country so the much talked-about peak may not be attained in one go; different peaks will occur in different regions because of the diversity and density of the population. We may actually manage to push it till there is a vaccine or a drug that should help. We shouldn’t only look at numbers but we have to see how to reduce death-related risks that is more crucial in our fight.

What threats do we face in future in terms of diseases?

We need to be very vigilant as infectious diseases are not going to go anywhere. It is not correct to say that only noncommunicable (lifestyle-related) diseases are a part of the future. Infectious diseases will emerge and will keep continuing. After the second outbreak of Nipah in 2019, I started to work on a multiple country project that included Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Mayanmar, Thailand, Indonesia etc. to work out a strategy to contain the spread. We have to protect not just ourselves but work in tandem with our neighbours to achieve larger protection. We need to work across borders. We started with dengue but then Covid happened and other projects had to be stalled. Hope it is taken up again in future.