Dr Gagandeep Kang on Friday said that there will not be a third wave of COVID-19 of the size and consequence the country witnessed during the second wave.
Dr Gagandeep Kang on third COVID wave
Remarking that the country is not done with COVID yet, the doctor said, "Are we going to be done with COVID? nOt anytime in the near future." This statement by Dr Kang came while she was speaking virtually at the CII Lifesciences Conclave in Christian Medical College, Vellore. Earlier in August, Manindra Agrawal, a scientist with IIT-Kanpur who is in the three-member team of experts tasked to project the surge in cases, had said the country may see a third wave peaking between October-November if a more virulent mutant of coronavirus emerges by September
Stressing over the need for a translational research ecosystem of clinical researchers that were willing to take a risk and are supported by the government and academia, the doctor said that new technologies can carry risks and there is a need for a regulatory system that is prepared for clinical risks.
“We need the academic medical environments that work with the industry to make sure that we can safely test these interventions in people. We do not have this at this time so strengthening regulation is key.” She said surveillance diagnostics is still dependent, very heavily, on imports. The routine PCR kits are being made by many companies in the country but the best laboratories are not yet using those tests, she observed. “We have to recognise that we need to be thinking about the quality of what we use so that we use what we make in diagnostics just as we do in vaccines and in drugs and in terms of sequencing,” she added.
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