Public healthcare expert recommends new COVID-19 vaccine strategy for India

“Unfortunately, it lurked in the population and hit back with a vengeance when our guard was down,” Indian civil servant Dr. Mrinalini Darswal said.

As India experiences a new wave of pandemic, an Indian public healthcare expert has called for adopting a “build, buy and jab” strategy for mass vaccination to handle the crisis along with the enforcement of appropriate behaviours and continuous communication from doctors, political leaders and administration. “We are witnessing an awful resurgence of the pandemic in India, where it was perceived, just a few months back, to be essentially over. Unfortunately, it lurked in the population and hit back with a vengeance when our guard was down,” Indian civil servant Dr. Mrinalini Darswal, currently pursuing doctoral studies in public health with a focus on at Harvard University, told PTI. It may be attributed in part to the pandemic fatigue in a population that relies on hard labour to earn a living and for whom waiting out the crisis over a prolonged period is not an option. However, the main reason seems to be the immune evading and highly infectious mutants, she said.