India should shift focus to Covid mortality: Experts

Mumbai: Experts say the central and state governments should focus on protecting the elderly, identifying clusters of Covid-19 and devising local strategy as the remaining lockdown measures are eased to put the battered economy back on track.The number of new Covid-19 cases is still rising though rate of recovery has improved to 47 per cent, from 42 per cent a week ago. Leading virologists and epidemiologists say lockdown fatigue is setting in, and that is why the new solution to deal with the crisis should be sustainable.Leading virologist Jacob John, who works at Christian Medical College, Vellore, told ET that it is time for the country to shift focus to the mortality curve from the epidemic curve (number of cases). Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India, agreed.“As long as deaths are contained, we are getting the milder experience of the epidemic,” Reddy said.Data available on Monday morning showed India’s total number of active Covid-19 cases, or those still under treatment, was 93,322, while total recoveries stood at 91,819 and deaths from the disease, 5,394.India’s Covid-19 mortality rate has come down in the last few weeks to 2.83 per cent from 3 per cent, which is similar to the global average.Reddy, who is also part of the National Covid-19 Task Force of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), said state governments need to focus on testing figures, which tell the number of tests done and how many new cases were found due to it; syndromic surveillance, where community health workers are put to work to track new cases; and look at hospitalisation of people coming in with severe respiratory problems. According to Reddy, India should no longer take doubling rate as criteria to look at the progression of the disease, because as the number goes up, the doubling rate is bound to get longer.John of CMC said that like with HIV, the government should raise awareness not only of the general public but also healthcare workers. Giridhar Babu, an epidemiologist who is part of the research group of ICMR on surveillance, told ET that evidence over the last two months suggests that clusters are responsible for the super spreading events.

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