Govt forms science & tech panel for virus response
NEW DELHI: As the country started witnessing a spike in the transmission rate of coro- navirus, the Centre on Tues-day constituted an Empowered Committee of Science and Technology for the response of Covid-19. In total, 1,397 confirmed cases of coronavirus were reported on Tuesday. The committee has been formed under the chairmanship of VK Paul, who is member Niti Aayog, and celebrated scientist K Vijay Raghavan, who is principal sci-entific adviser to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Giving details about the functional areas of the panel, joint sec- retary Lav Aggrawal said that the committee will coordinate with scientific agencies, scientists, industry and regulatory bodies.
The concerned officials of the Departments of Biotech- nology (DBT), Council of Sci-entific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), and Indian Insti- tute of Science (IISc) would work on the ways to promote research and development, he said. The committee will focus on strengthening lab testing facilities and serology in coor- dination with government and private sectors, the ministry official said, adding hat it will also work on the strategies to increase surveillance and clin- ical research to find out more information about the viruswhich may help in controlling the spread of the lethal virus.
"The scientific institutions of all ministries are also working in coordination with each other on multi disciplinary projects and primarily focusing on the epurposing of drugs. The task force on Covid-19 is looking after the trial of drugs, so that informed decision can be taken in this regard. Also, the task-force is working on finding mathematical models to prepare disease prevention strategies, medical equipment and auxiliary requirements." Meanwhile, comment- ing on election criterion of Covid-19 hotspots, Aggrawal said, "Hotspots are an emerg- ing concept which changes based on inputs and data of virus spread. The government is ensuring that these spots are effectively monitored so that the virus does not spread.
Even an area with a single case can become a hotspot if the government feels that there is a possibility of a wider spread in that area." "The ministry is contin- uously identifying emerging 'hotspots' of Covid-19 infec- tion and employing a rigorous cluster containment strategy. Since we are dealing with a communicable disease, the government does not want to assign a particular number by which it decides to declare an area to be a 'hotspot'," he said. On the sudden spike in confirmed cases, the health ministry official said, "It ll happened due to non-reporting of infected persons as the success in the fight against Covid-19 is possible with com- munity participation only. If any person iolates the lock- down, many will get infected with the virus." Commenting on the increasing trend, ICMR offi- cial Raman Gangakhdekar said, "There is no established increasing trend. Reporting of more number of cases in a day is not enough to pre- dict the trend. The cases get- ting reported now are of those who were infected before the lockdown." The ICMR official further clarified that creating dedi- cated hospitals and isolation wards for Covid-19 patientsdoesn't mean that the country is going to have those num- ber of positive cases. "We arepreparing ourselves to face the challenge as the behav- ioural pattern of the irus is not known yet. The ICMR has found that three types of strains of Covid-19 have been imported from different coun-tries in India and it has come to the notice that there is no decreasing trend in the trans- mission rate of the virus." With health experts warning that several countries do not have enough ventilators for a worst-case scenario, doctors and bio-medical engi- neers have been trying to fig- ure out how to innovate and modify their medical equip- ment to serve a large number of patients with limited resources.
