Professor and Head of Life Course Epidemiology at thePublic Health Foundation of India, Giridhara R Babu said thecoronavirus is in complete ascendancy stage in states such asWest Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat, where ithas gone beyond minimal containment. There, things will have to be completely different interms of reducing the mortality rate, while in other states weare yet to see the surge and, therefore, our preparedness willhave to continue, he said. But in both these categories we have to make suresurveillance is the only thing which will guide us, because ifwe lose our guard now, then we will no longer enjoy thatsuccess that we relatively have compared to the othercountries, Babu told . The only way forward is surveillance.
On whether states would see the pandemic peaking atdifferent times and it would not be uniform across the countryhe said: Absolutely, each State is like a country. We canpostpone (the peak) in low transmission areas.
Babu, who is trained in Epidemiology (MPH and PhD) fromUniversity of California Los Angeles (UCLA), said one shouldnot get bogged down with the increase in number of cases,adding, the goal is to reduce the number of deaths. If your surveillance is good, then you will pick up morecases, and thereby you will reduce the number of deaths, thatshould be the focus.
He said he is worried about silent districts, wherethere is not even a single COVID-19 reported case. Giving an example, Babu said a few days ago there were nocases in three districts in Karnataka (Davanagere, Chitradurgaand Shivamogga) but they have now become hotspots. So, for me, the nomenclature of red, orange and green iscompletely artificial because it is dynamic and you cannothave such a categorisation for a dynamic process, he said. According to him, it is now known that the number ofexpected COVID-19 cases in the country is 54 per million (tenlakh) population. He said if a district has not reported coronavirus cases,it should be in the red because surveillance is notadequate. Even in a well-controlled state like Kerala, casesare coming back. He suggested drawing up district action plans, somethingsimilar to pulse polio campaigns (which are done three days ina year), for which preparations start three months in advancein terms of micro-plan, which lists every migrant populationand temporary settlement. Then, teams are drawn to cover everybody, then there islogistics that are planned, we do not have district actionplan for the country (to handle COVID-19). When you open upafter lockdown, and if there is a surge in cases in a fewdistricts, they dont know what to do. That terrifies me. Districts should have task force and action plans tohandle the COVID-19 pandemic, added Babu, who has worked withWorld Health Organisation for nearly six years, during whichhis efforts included stopping polio transmission in Karnatakaand initiation of measles surveillance. RSVS VS