COVID-19 in India: An innovative approach could be to use aggressive Diagnostics, Surveillance & treatment protocols in combination with Vaccines

Covid-19 since the onset in March 2020 (being declared a global pandemic) has taken a heavy toll of economic activity and social well-being. Countries like India where there is no employment insurance scheme or social security for middle income groups have been badly impacted. Many employees in the office jobs lost several months of income. According to CMIE (Centre for monitoring of Indian economy), around 18.9 million jobs were reduced till July 2020. This impact do not include loss of new jobs not being created which was needed in order to support the 1.3 million youth which enters the workforce every month.

This calls for out of box thinking for the betterment of the country whose economy is anticipated to shrink 7.7% in financial year ending 31 March 2021. Thus, the economic costs of the pandemic for several families has been very high. Also, a significant number of people have suffered from mental health issues being working from home.

If we look at the vaccine roll out plans, it would take around 9 months to fully arrest the covid-19 pandemic in the country, based on the current rate. A notable timeline exception could emerge with the newer single dose vaccines being getting approved soon. An example is JNJ-78436735, vaccine from Johnson and Johnson based on viral vector platform.

A better goal could be to bring down the in-patient caseload in the country close to Zero and not to deter the innovations and supply of Covid-19 diagnostics which should be made available over the counter. Simultaneously, a larger number of clinicians should be accredited or trained to treat mild to moderate symptoms of Covid-19. Social stigma of suffering from Covid -19 in terms of isolation requirements and movement restrictions should be further reduced to not more than 5 days. Novel more specific diagnostics can potentially help in the identification of population which need to be vaccinated as compared to others who may have resistance to SARS-Cov-2 or have sufficient no. of antibodies to deter infection. Recent findings from university of North Carolina researchers, where an RBD based antibody detection promises to provide more clearer picture in this regard could be a very significant development.

This could be especially important in case there are new variants of the virus which might trigger further infections and therefore resulting illnesses and hospitalizations. Notwithstanding the new potent mutant versions reported in UK and South Africa, a case in point are the thousands of mutations reported since the onset of pandemic. India or countries like US, Italy need to take more actions predominantly due to the large population base which has suffered with severe consequences.

At a personnel level, I do tend to believe that health authorities would take notice of the other measures needed in order to move faster to a Covid-19 free India. Even though we cannot control whether the virus would stay or not but it should not cause more health or economic damage than the common cold.

Let me know what do you think and feel free to get in touch using contact details in my profile.