New Delhi: Sixteen top epidemiologists and scientists have accused the Modi government of causing humanitarian crisis and spread of COVID-19 because it wrongly depended on the primary advice by clinicians and academic epidemiologists with limited field training and overwhelmingly relied on general administrative bureaucrats.
"The incoherent and often rapidly shifting strategies and policies, especially at the national level, are more a reflection of 'afterthought' and 'catching up' phenomenon on part of the policy makers rather than a well thought cogent strategy with an epidemiologic basis. The engagement with expert technocrats in the areas of epidemiology, public health, preventive medicine and social scientists was limited," they said in a report on behalf of the Joint COVID-19 task force constituted by the Indian Public Health Association and Indian Association of Epidemiologists.
They asserted that "most COVID-19 infected persons are mostly without symptoms. Even if symptomatic, the symptoms are mild and not life threatening. Majority of the patients does not require hospitalisation and can be treated at domiciliary level with a modified "enforced social distancing" imposed on the households." They gave a call to sit up, take notice and bring about fundamental changes in life style and also in the health policy.
"Had the migrant persons been allowed to go home at the beginning of the epidemic when the disease spread was very low, the current situation could have been avoided. The returning migrants are now taking infection to each and every corner of the country, mostly to rural areas, in districts with relatively weak public health systems," they said in a detailed report.
The repudiated epidemiologists claimed it is unrealistic to expect that the pandemic can be eliminated at this stage since "community transmission is already well-established across large sections or sub-populations in the Country.
As public health academics, practitioners and researchers in India, the joint task forced has recommended a 11-point action plan, including constitution of a panel of inter-disciplinary public health and preventive health experts and social scientists at central, state and district levels to address both public health and humanitariancrises, free sharing of data in public domain, and constitution of working groups to provide real-time technical inputs to the government. It said the opaqueness maintained by the Government of India as well as state governments in the context ofdata so far has been a serious impediment to independent research and appropriate response to the pandemic.
