How a pandemic could have been managed in India

I am no public health expert but I have studied management and practiced as a Human Resources leader in various corporations and have managed various complex issues within the organizations I have worked for. No doubt that pandemic of COVID-19 is something that is unprecedented in human history. There have been varied opinions about the management of pandemic and it is scattered in a binary unfortunately. Those who like a particular leader feel that he is working hard while his critics, who have an agenda against an innocent man, are unnecessarily furious. Those who have a scientific temper, not tempered by a bias, on the other hand feel that the management of pandemic, was a complete disaster. I tend to agree with the second group. And no, the criticism of the government is not about demeaning India.

When the news of a possible spread came to India, in February 2020, the Government claimed that the airports were screened for a possible infection. That was not completely true. A friend of mine visited India from the UAE that time and he was merely asked to sign a declaration that he didn’t have cough or flu like symptoms. That was it. The time was ripe to check in with the experts within the Country as well as WHO. We have Sowmya Swaminathan in WHO whose expert opinion could have been taken.

Once the spread of virus was imminent, the first step from the government would have been to dial WHO and speak to an epidemiologist or a public health expert from within the nation and to create a small task force, full of experts of different domains who would create action plans and do the following;

• Create a ranking of states in terms of health infrastructure (example say Bihar would be lower than Tamil Nadu, that would make it clear about which state would need more support if a crisis would emerge)
• Check with many International NGOs working in the healthcare spectrum about their experiences in dealing with epidemics and changes in health behaviors. Some sharing of best practices would have helped. Perhaps it would have been easier if FCRA law would have been made flexible at least for couple of years, for better funding to happen. NGOs also help a great deal in spreading awareness through their various outreach programs. I have myself headed HR role of two International NGOs which were really doing great work.
• Create treatment and prevention protocols. A lockdown was certainly necessary as the vaccines had not emerged as yet globally. If the lockdown was well thought of, the migrant worker crisis would have been avoided. Trains or buses could have been plying for them before the lockdown was announced, hence avoiding humanitarian crisis. A task force could have been led by a business leader, perhaps Kiran Majumdar Shaw or Azim Premji or anyone from the Tata group as we needed more management expertise. This could have been helped by few smart civil servants, some interns from top business schools and so on. Didn’t we elect current government to expect excellence, to give us a Singapore type model of governance? If people voted only for religious renaissance, no one can help them.

The above mentioned steps would have won a lot more laurels to the political leadership and would have been a preparation ground for the next wave that is effecting us as I write this. Now coming to the second wave and the deadly Mutant, there was a need of supply chain expert, maybe a senior supply chain leader from a major pharma company to look at the gaps in liquid oxygen production and supply, availability of hospital beds, creating makeshift hospitals (maybe with help of army), funding for enhancing vaccine production and allocation of vaccines to different states and so on. The problem is that this government was not at all considering expert advice. In fact the election campaigns and religious conglomeration by different groups aided to the spread of the new mutant in many ways possible. It was wise for supreme court to form a task force but they are all medical experts. We need a mix of public health administrators, international NGO representatives (as they know public health better than Government many a times), Doctors and as I said, supply chain experts.

Lockdown is a temporary measure and that has also been dealt with rather poorly. Many states declared lockdown with just 4 hours of a window to shop for essentials which defeats the purpose. The essentials including daily groceries or vegetables/meat can be shopped for the entire day (as it happened in the year 2020 in major states in India). The major focus now should be to ramp up vaccine production or even buying from International Markets including Russia, China and elsewhere where vaccines have been developed. The other important factor is about treatment. The drugs not recommended by either the WHO or US FDA should be avoided as there must be reasons of not taking them as well. Also, in my personal opinion it is definitely a great thing to have government hospitals dispensing vaccines. However, some vaccines should be at private hospitals as well, for people who are willing to pay a premium. Even if the cost is say rupees 2000–2500 for a jab, many would be able to afford.

We need more expertise. Just trusting politicians and civil servants who love paperwork is not enough. The foreign aid that came recently was stuck at IGI airport at Delhi because of systematic delays. And that is the problem with our Nation. The system is way too slow. Hopefully while writing this, things are on the right track and we can expect a better management of the pandemic now. The 2-DG tested and developed by DRDO in India also gives a ray of optimism to those who will be hospitalized for treatment in the near future.

Finally, this is a piece of personal opinions expressed. I have written this from a managerial point of view and rational thinking individuals should question and not just blindly trust one narrative v/s the other. The worrisome fact is the unscientific belief in things like turmeric, cow urine and so on. Hope things become better in days to come.