Hyderabad: The Government of India has prepared a blueprint for pandemic preparedness that includes lessons learnt in combating Covid-19 in the country, former ICMR director general Dr Balram Bhargava said.
“Having ‘ring fencing’ for hot zones are well-defined, and were utilised. There were learnings, there were a lot of mistakes and we learnt from them,” Dr Bhargava said at a press conference on Wednesday, replying to a question on whether ‘red zones’ put in place during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic in India worked the way they were supposed to.
This preparedness for facing pandemics, he said, is not just on the part of the government but also includes the pharma industry and other organisations. “A lot of work is still happening,” he said.
Dr Bhargava was speaking to reporters after delivering the 11th Dr Manohar VN Shirodkar Memorial Lecture at IICT on ‘India’s Covid Vaccine Saga’.
On current concerns about the new JN.1 variant of Coronavirus popping up in the country, Dr Bhargava said: “The general message is you have to be careful, and the government has tremendously increased surveillance. And surveillance has to be done for influenza-like illnesses (ILI), and severe acute respiratory illnesses (Sari). And if one is in an area where this variant has been found, then masks must be used for protection.”
He said there were no fresh recommendations for additional vaccinations for JN.1, and that the only recommendation is that people should have taken both doses of Covid-19 vaccines and the booster dose. “The vulnerable must be fully vaccinated and masked,” he said.
On specific vaccines for the JN.1 variant, he said: “Apparently, Serum Institute has been exporting nano particle vaccine to the US that is effective against JN.1.”
Earlier in his lecture, Dr Bhargava said the government was looking into data to explore whether vaccines for JN.1 could be rolled out soon. “However, JN.1 is not going to be a serious problem according to what experts believe, it is going to be mild, though we have had a few deaths in Kerala,” he said.
