Covid-19 no longer a big threat to lives: CDC India head Desai
3 min read . Updated: 09 Mar 2023, 11:42 PM IST
PremiumFrom CDC’s perspective and the US administration side of things, we are ready to shift our response in the US, and we feel that we are approaching the time when we can manage covid-19 without using lockdowns etc, says CDC India head.
New Delhi: Covid-19 has reached a stage where the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) no longer considers it a severe threat to people’s health, but as just another disease, CDC India head Meghna Desai said. In an interview, she said that the jury is still out on whether the virus originated in a lab. Desai also spoke about CDC’s work in India and the country’s public health system. Edited excerpts:
Do you think covid-19 pandemic has come to endemicity, in India and the world?
From CDC’s perspective and the US administration side of things, we are ready to shift our response in the US, and we feel that we are approaching the time when we can manage covid-19 without using lockdowns etc. SARS-CoV-2 remains a public health priority for us, but we are in a better position to respond. We can definitely say that we are at a point where covid-19 doesn’t have to disrupt our lives which is what really most endemic diseases are. We have to make sure that we have to stay up to date with our testing, vaccines, boosters etc. However, we no longer consider covid-19 a severe threat to people’s health. Covid-19 is yet just another disease.
Do you think that SARS-CoV-2 is a lab-made virus which first originated in China?
The jury is still out on that. I think that’s probably because we have no evidence. There are so many priority things we have to deal with right now including Marburg virus outbreak disease happening in West Africa. At this point of time, it is not the priority for CDC to figure out where specific virus (SARS-CoV-2) came from and our response does not change.
What is your view on recent CDC’s report about contaminated Indian cough syrups in Gambia? Why are India-made drugs being declared poor quality in other countries?
The CDC provides technical support in the form of surveillance, epidemiological investigation, epidemiological data analysis for an outbreak. However, the CDC is not a regulatory agency and does not typically play a role in drug manufacturing, quality assurance testing, or supply chain issues.
What is the Field Epidemiology Training Programme? (FETP) What are Indian counterparts learning out of it?
FETP is CDCs flagship programme for training of field epidemiologists and is a globally recognized workforce development. The focus is to enhance the practice of epidemiology in a mentored environment and applying those skills to detect diseases. The programme is designed to produce highly skilled epidemiologists who work at the frontline to strengthen surveillance systems, detect diseases and respond to public health threats. We have been doing this training over 40 years now globally and trained 21,000 disease detectives in more than 80 countries and supported over 5,600 outbreak investigations. In India, we have been doing this training for the past 10 years and almost 1,000 individuals benefited from FETP, out of which 370 officers have completed advanced versions of the FETP programme. The training is happening throughout the country via three hubs—National Centre Disease Control (NCDC), National Institute of Epidemiology and WHO Country office. Around 40% of the districts have been covered with trained graduates and now, we have a roadmap to cover remaining 60% of the districts who still don’t have the field epidemiologists.