The WHO has declared #CoronavirusPandemic. Indian travel bans imposed. Policy and governance response in India through state governments and local corporations will be key to fighting this. Think global, act local. Here's what India can do given unique constraints + conditions.
First thing to understand is that the response will need clear command and control, collaboration and community response. It will need rapid learning and acting. Some of it has not even been initiated. It must be immediately and sustained over months.
At the national level, only a certain set of restrictive actions and orders can be passed. Given India's state capacity in public and private health as well as Health's constitutional status in the state list states, cities and local bodies is where this battle will be won.
My dream team for #CoronavirusPandemic at GoI would be Ajay Shah, Keshav Deshiraju, K Sujatha Rao, Jayprakash Narayan, Ashwin Mahesh, Rathin Roy, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Soumya Swaminathan, Ashok Alexander, Dr. Devi Shetty with Cabinet Secretary as captain for speed/ productivity.
My dream scientific sub-committee for #CoronavirusPandemic would be chaired by Professor Vijayaraghavan and consist of IIIT Delhi, IIT Delhi/Bombay, TIFR, NCBS, THSTI, ICGEB, CSIR-IGIB, AIIMS, IMA, FICCI, NatHealth, CII with invites to WHO, World Bank, BMGF, Chinese Gov and CDC.
Investing in health infrastructure and public health ecosystem is a prudent and necessary decision as the Corona Virus has a significant impact on productivity, economy and growth which has a moral imperative at the same time in India which has tremendous poverty/inequality.
There needs to be a centralized repository of where the problem is. National, state and local governments should be using the same data reporting website and tracking of patients to locate the epidemic precisely. Different sources and websites causes panic and bad decisions.
Airline, railway and bus travel needs to be rationalized inter-state and inter-city depending on the testing and incidences in the regions. Consider base-raters and growth-raters in equal measure for decisions depending on the population density and public health capacity.
The above team structure should replicate at local levels with Chief Ministers and Chief Secretaries reporting under the same structure or finding a way to collaborate across state and city boundaries by building the response stack infrastructure and keeping it open-source.
There needs to be an immediate playbook that staggers the next few waves of the pandemic for the individual citizen, health worker/staff, medical staff and the public health ecosystem across the board. In all languages and formats. Lyrics must be the same, aesthetics localized.
The scientific playbook of response at an individual and community level needs to be embedded into the Top 100 apps on the app store with an emergency meeting with Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp and Youtube to implement the same as chatbots, public service messenger and ads.
There will be a need for rapid testing and to create capacity for the same. Flexibility in finances and rules to adopt global innovations will be equally important. We must take advantage of global efforts and learn from others' mistakes. No time for politics/bureaucratic idiots.
All of India's top startups and companies working on diagnostic testing and services must be brought together to involve and scale private labs. This won't work without partnerships of trust and scale. India has the capacity to serve the world if it trusts its private sector.
State and its competent citizens bolstered by academia must do thinking, planning and make the first move. Where sarkaar is dominant, it must lead from the front.
Market and society must help what's conceived in the studio mode to factory mode. Scale for wellness and growth.
Market and society must help what's conceived in the studio mode to factory mode. Scale for wellness and growth.
A response will require tracking and connecting dots. Connect social media platforms, government data, maps/latlongs, public health ecosystem (non-medical, paramedical and medical), testing data, network graphs, follow up tests should be made comprehensively on a single backend.
Healthcare is a noble profession and a coveted one too. Protecting doctors, nurses, and professionals is ethical and strategic. Equipment, gear, preferential treatment, morale boosters, protocols and staggering retired and current private and public workforce needed.
Overall, this #CoronavirusPandemic needs state leadership, market scale, societal support, scientific inputs, sociological and behavioral change and media/social media air cover to ensure we don't lose a large number of folks. Use science, arts and commerce. Avoid suffering. FIN.
