John Hopkins expert Dr Amita Gupta on India’s covid-19 challenge & future preparedness options

The rising covid-19 caseload has been a worry and though mathematical modelling experts have said India will see a peak this month, each state within the country will see its own peak. In times such as these, even as patients and their relatives get busy scurrying for beds, oxygen and some critical medicines, Financial Express Online reached out to Dr Amita Gupta, professor of Infectious Diseases at the John Hopkins School of Medicine and the co-director of the recently launched John Hopkins India Institute. She speaks on the lessons one could learn from the different waves of the Covid-19 infection – US for instance, has seen the three waves already and how what has worked there could be looked at by India.

In an exclusive interview, she also talks of the role that targeted lockdowns can play and what India could look at to be better prepared for the third wave. For instance, she gives an example of how in the state of California, the state department mapped put all the infections that had happened in the first and second wave and based on the information devised its future vaccination efforts and focused first on the areas with highest surges in the caseload. While she repeatedly emphasizes the importance of masking and physical distancing, she does see a crucial role that routine surveillance and coordinated operations can play. She also talks of the John Hopkins India Institute and its recently set up covid task force and the ground it intends to cover.

WATCH the interview: