At least 100 scientists petition PM Modi for better access to ICMR’s data bank

‘ICMR database is inaccessible to anyone outside of the government and perhaps also to many within the government’

At least 100 Indian scientists, several of them biologists and specialists in disease modelling and genome sequencing from some of India’s leading research institutions, have petitioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi to coax the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to improve access to its data bank. “The ICMR database is inaccessible to anyone outside of the government and perhaps also to many within the government. Most scientists — including several identified by Department of Science and Technology and NITI Aayog to develop new prediction models for India — do not have access to these data,” their petition noted. As India grapples a fearsome second wave of the pandemic with over 350,000 new cases being added every day, questions have been raised on whether the government and its scientists were blindsided.