 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. We are today going to be discussing the spread of the coronavirus in India which is now being called an epidemic in this country but is actually a global pandemic. And to talk to us more about this we have with us Mr. V.R. Raman who is part of the Delhi Science Forum and also is the national convener of the Public Health Resource Network. So Mr. Raman if you could explain to us right now what is the general situation because there are so many updates that are coming with the spread of the COVID-19. So if you could tell us a little bit more about the current situation. If you see the global share of the pandemic still China is you know contributing the major share of it. So at this point close to 80,000 cases and a large number of deaths are you know recorded in China followed by some European countries Iran and all that. So broadly we have 114,000 cases confirmed cases globally and around 4,000 deaths confirmed by WHO by as of yesterday I mean 10th of March. So currently this is spread in 109 countries 109 countries. So the spread is yeah it is quite big and it is growing. So that is a concern while the mortality is within a 3 percentage rate the problem is with the health systems the hospitals are overcrowded panic is on across the globe there is no medicine or there is no treatment available. So globally it is becoming a major issue and travel and economy a lot of slowdowns happening as part of this and yeah so globally the situation is quite alarming at this point and WHO and other organizations are put in lot of efforts country health systems are into it. Coming to India situation India the government till yesterday they have reported 50 cases but today morning as of now the total number of cases including the 3 cases that has been cured in Kerala it looks like we have 62 cases confirmed cases as of now where in 59 cases are live and you know getting treated. No deaths in India but currently we have crossed a stage of you know disease caused by international travelers to a locally transmitted situation. So WHO yesterday has classified India within the locally transmitted you know situation so that creates a lot of challenges for India. Actually that brings me to the question of the kind of challenges it creates for India. In terms of the kind of panic that this has created there are lots of messages that circulate on WhatsApp there are a lot of advisories that are being issued. Now is India prepared to handle the kind of spread this epidemic has just to handle the spread of the virus and the second stage of my question is is it even ready to handle cases that are coming into hospitals with the infection of this virus. The panic is quite high and some of the private companies you know their staff you know have been found positive in Delhi and second company as I understand today one more company has been closed today again you know in suspicion. So that is one set of panic wherein people are worried about the spread of the case. The second thing is the information panic. The information panic is the most dangerous one as far as I understand rather than going by scientifically reliable kind of information there are many organizations are now outfits which are spreading sometimes even mischievous kind of information and guidance to the people and with a large number of people believing and some of the people who are making these kind of statements are supposed to be responsible but they are not acting as responsible like politicians or some community leaders or some religious leaders wherein you know they are suggesting that cow dung or urine or those kinds of things can be used for and alternative systems of medicine also are you know claiming that you know they can cure the you know or address the virus situation wherein this has not been scientifically proved the awareness on this is yet to be improved. So overall the situation about information we need to really really go by what the World Health Organization or you know the government sites are formally giving. At this point it is very important extremely important that people are focusing more on hand hygiene you know very frequent hand washing with a in a very careful manner that we are not causing the virus getting into our hand and you know through our hand it is going to our face, eyes, nose and mouth that is something very important that people have to take first. Second you know people have to keep some safe distance when talking to people with some symptoms or in public places even without symptoms since you don't know so that safe distance that makes a lot of importance avoiding place crowded places festivals religious gatherings and you know various other you know forms of coming together. It also makes one think that how will this affect the daily lives of people because we have read messages that have come even from our relatives were staying in US many of them have been given work from home in countries that are directly affected they've become ghost towns in China I mean you have ghost towns how will India tackle this? So one of the thing is that work from home for officers so Kerala government has done yesterday some very interesting measures they have taken so one of the important measures is that they have closed all the schools till 7 standard only exams will happen to school so that kind of a gathering and morning movement of the students there and they have also looked at interestingly the Anganwadi's when it gets closed so the food are taken to home prepare food and you know get it to the children at home so those kinds of measures and interestingly one other thing which is notable here is that the Kerala Chief Minister's press conference yesterday underlined that because people are going to sit you know at home for a longer time they are also considering improving the bandwidth for internet usage so that's the next generation kind of thinking so yeah there are a lot of things that you know we need to do at this point we need to practically we need to think about how you know from an office situation when people are from working from home how connectivity and other things are improved and you know the virtual kind of ways what all software what all kind of things needs to be given to them all those things will come into consideration and the other thing is that how to control gatherings quite often I was seeing again a Kerala example day before yesterday there was a mass gathering in Kerala in Trivandrum which is called the Atukal Pongala so this this gathering if the because it is religious and there is a lot of sensitivities around so the government probably didn't find it you know reasonable to reasonable to stop it yeah but it was important for those kinds of gatherings to be stopped so now at least from now on wholly there was some messages coming from but still yesterday I was seeing across Delhi or other places the gatherings of holy although it was reduced compared to previous years but it was there gatherings were there and people were you know coming together playing and all that so these kinds of things people have to understand now that unless and until we are moving away from this kind of a situation and taking more precautions as a society the government alone cannot tackle this problem government and people together only can tackle this problem actually it makes me think of another part which I get a lot of our all of us would be interested in has India been able to handle any other epidemic of a nature that is close to the coronavirus epidemic see the Indian health systems it is one of the fragile health systems across the world so it's a mix of private public recognized non-recognized it's a huge array of practitioners who is providing health care to people and our preventive health systems are exceptionally poor we are very good for conducting some vaccinations and you know reaching to people for some immunization programs and all that but beyond that if you look at our ability to yes do the vigilance do the surveillance and to reach the large set of population and one of our major challenges that you know the population density population all that needs to be considered within that our ability our preventive systems ability is very limited so these are something to be understood while we are talking about our health system so but there are some examples but in any case Kerala seems to be an outlayer in the Indian situation wherein last year and even before one year before last year there was an episode of Nipah which Kerala very in a very planned way in a very efficient way Kerala could control the spread of the virus and the health systems were quite equipped training was given trainings were given to all kind of actors people were taken on board for acting as you know educators and supporters of the health system so the Nipah case really gives us hope but the problem is that out of Kerala the Indian health systems are extremely different so while we have a India Kerala case study I don't think that is giving much hope for health systems outside Kerala Tamil Nadu is also to some extent you know their preventive health systems are well spread maybe Karnataka can do little more and with panchayat health systems maybe West Bengal is having little more reach to the people but many other states the larger ones are really under threat so Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Kashmir, Chhattisgarh, Kashmir all those health systems need in Chhattisgarh also because of the community health workers there are some reach but not necessarily how the government plans their outreach and how they are well trained and equipped for this kind of situation currently it's an urban threat we need to understand the COVID-19 the coronavirus is currently into limited into urban kind of spheres but the more we are traveling because you know now it is a local transmission has started yesterday's ministry notification still says that we are only limiting to international travelers that protocol needs to be changed now because we have local transmission and it can be even more so once it is grown for example I can tell you most of the Delhi people over the last couple of weeks Delhi had some specific infections and we don't know whether people have interacted with infected people or not so possibly there are silent carriers around and that's a threat and this threat how much we have realized this threat is something we are not aware and if you if you have noticed last week during holy and around even now many people are going to Himachal Pradesh villages as as tourists so how responsible these tourists are and how responsibly they are you know having an awareness about we are potential we could be I mean we can be the potential carriers for this kind of a situation and how much are we taking these problems to the rural area that kind of thinking I think is missing it's in a country like India it's also pretty difficult to enforce or to get going in terms of smaller groups that will be going to the ground to create awareness this is what I was it's a huge challenge it's a huge challenge this is what we need to learn from Kerala although you know it is difficult to learn from because of the fragile systems outside but it is important still to say you know see how they are handling it so each and every traveler who is you know getting down in one of the airport or whatever or even in the Nipah cases they were able to trace it to all the various contacts and they may prepare a map full mapping of where all did they go and then based on that all those people are either requested to contact the health system or reached out by the health system to understand you know whether they are in a potential threat or not and then they are put put into isolation and observation so it's a lot of care lot of precautions that the health systems has to now initiate then only you can handle the other problem is with while you know the upper class and upper middle class and economically better off people are very well aware about the situation the poor class and the working class in urban areas are going to be affected so what are we thinking about and how are we going to tackle this problem in slums in you know areas where the working class is leaving and how are we taking them on board because many of them are thinking this is not I mean one the message is not properly reaching them second you know they are thinking that this is a problem that they may not be easily getting so there there's a lot of and also lot of superstitions and you know the wrong messages are going to them through WhatsApp like you know some temperatures you know a lot of lot of wrong messages are going so it is a very difficult task could task to reach out to the working class in urban poor and take them on board in terms of information and then providing them services the so a lot of cooperation from both the center and the state health departments have to come on board in every which way because health related services is very expensive in India the thing is that you know now the cases are under control we don't know the government of India has said not putting out how many people are under observation how many people are you know precautionary kind of admissions are given to how many people this kind of data except in the case of Kerala we don't have that kind of data at least no I am not able to trace it if at all government is putting up put up it in ncdc or somewhere I'm not able to trace it but currently we can assume that if you know 60 62 cases are confirmed so it could be some 10 times of that people will be under observation or even more but you know since it is a local transmission this can go up once this is going up currently the hospitalization requirement is around 20 percentage of the you know overall positive cases not all cases require hospitalized attention but this 20 percentage the the the more cases are going up the more hospitalization requirement also will go up and our hospitals are not really equipped specifically in the central state corporation kind of thing that you said it is very true for Delhi kind of a state wherein part of the things are with the state government part of them are with the municipal corporations and part of them are with the central government so this triangulation how they are going to do it is important for a city like or a state like Delhi so how they are doing it at least you know there was a meeting yesterday with all these people the chief minister of Delhi municipal corporation people and the health ministry there was some discussion happening and how this is taken into an action plan and then implementing is going to be quite vital then equipping the mohalla clinic kind of situation in Delhi or the primary health care centers in the urban areas of other places yeah precisely so these how the governments are equipping them and how the governments are training these people because currently we have something called the IDSP disease surveillance program which is limited to the the reach is limited up to a block level or a district headquarter in many cases it is only up to district headquarter so now the surveillance needs to reach to even household level and habitation level so how would you ensure that the frontline workers onwards all the various health system actors are involved trained and you know they are so this kind of a preparation is needed and this battle is long this battle is not as as far as we understand the corona virus need a lot of persistent will require a lot of persistent effort it is not one time kind of a thing and that is what one of the error that happened in Kerala was you know they successfully handled three cases and the people were discharged from the hospital and they were thinking that now the things are over our challenges are over all in a sudden within minutes one family violated the principles in the airport and they met various people and now close to 1300 people are under observation so all in a sudden yeah the the festival of or the celebration of success turned into again a added vigilance so this is a lesson to take from the so the system should not be getting overconfident about doing something better at the initial stage now we need to be prepared more for the growing kind of situation growing epidemic and then making our systems at the state level at the district level and at the block level and at the peripheries how are we kind of setting up this in anticipation of the problem even though it is not coming the preparedness is important so that is where I think a major challenge is you know waiting for India clearly the situation needs a lot of work and let's hope that the governments both state and center they come together to rise to this challenge over and above any other politics that is taking place in this country keep watching news click