Federal health authorities failed to respond adequately to that warning, Dr Subhash Salunke, who has 30 years of experience in public health in India, Indonesia and the US, said.
The variant’s first impact was detected in the Amravati district of the western state of Maharashtra, where health authorities recorded a rapid increase in coronavirus infections in early February, even as cases fell elsewhere in India.
Salunke, a former WHO official advising the Maharashtra government, said he alerted some of India’s most senior health officials in early March, speaking on the telephone to prime minister Narendra Modi’s main coronavirus adviser, V.K. Paul, and the head of the National Centre for Disease Control, Sujeet Kumar Singh.
Salunke told Reuters he warned both Paul and Singh that the virus was showing signs of mutating in Amravati, that its transmissibility was increasing, and requested federal help in sequencing more samples to establish how the variant was behaving. “In spite of a public health person like me giving them a sound warning, they did not take heed,” Salunke said.
In response to Reuters’ questions, Paul said he spoke with Salunke, but described the conversation as Salunke conveying information rather than issuing a warning.
He rejected Salunke’s accusation that he did not take heed, saying he requested that India*s National Institute of Virology study the variant more closely, and told the Maharashtra state government to intensify its existing response to the virus.