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ICMR chief Balram Bhargava recalls night govt scientists found out about India's 1st Covid-19 case

YB WEB DESK. Dated: 11/23/2021 12:35:45 PM

New Delhi, Nov 22 From the first Covid case in India to vaccine development initiatives, India Today brings to you excerpts from Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Director General Balram Bhargava’s book ‘Going Viral’ to be launched on Tuesday (November 23). "It was a dramatic night with very little margin for error, and I am thankful to the team for its promptness and the hard work its members put in. We cross-checked the data repeatedly, working late into the night, discussing and reviewing the data. The gravity of the results of our testing was huge—to tell the government, the people of the country and the world, that the virus had entered our shores. Dr Raman Gangakhedkar, a senior scientist from the ICMR, was then on a visit to the institute, and we reported the matter to him. He in turn reported it to the government, and the rest is history." "For India especially, the problem was even graver. We do not have the best of health infrastructure. As a nation with 1.3 billion people, we have faced several challenges upgrading our health system over the decades." "India has been a torchbearer in conducting repeated nationwide sero-surveys for SARS-CoV-2. These field epidemiological capacities are expected to be repurposed for several other important studies, particularly to determine the burden of vaccine-preventable diseases and assessing post-vaccination trends. Nurturing the country’s laboratory infrastructure10 has been another important outcome, from a long-term health systems perspective. We all felt the need to establish molecular diagnostic capacities for detecting infectious disease pathogens. ‘Earlier we had only a few labs in the country that had the people and facilities to diagnose and study viral disease outbreaks. But now there is a good quality lab in virtually every district of India,’ Dr Samiran Panda, head, ICMR’s Epidemiology and Communicable Diseases Division said. This is a tremendous value addition to India’s public health system. We are determined to effectively repurpose our infrastructure and human capital (read: all the dedicated people involved in this work and future scientists).