Health emergency of a lifetime

The ministries may not have opted to work from home yet but that doesn't mean the government sees COVID-19 as a passing threat

The government has advised work from home for the private sector, but has not yet implemented it in any ministry. This is something you get to hear often these days in the sanitised corridors of the government. The fact that the establishment hasn’t allowed work from home does not mean it sees COVID-19 as a passing threat. On the contrary, it’s the biggest health emergency in a lifetime, as officials across ministries agree.

Many are talking about the Spanish flu of 1918 and even referring to The Great Influenza, the epic story of the deadly pandemic in human history by John M Barry that’s selling rather well on Amazon, as a must read in these times for lessons on how to handle a crisis of this proportion. With that in the backdrop, the focus right now is on preparation for stage 3, just in case coronavirus reaches community level. While the random tests by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) have not shown community spread so far, the government’s readiness to strike is critical as soon as it’s required. With hardly any other work being done in the government or anywhere else, corona meetings are occupying the centre stage for good reason.

Not surprisingly, the Prime Minister is monitoring the situation on a daily basis and taking briefings from the relevant officials. The meetings held by the Cabinet Secretary as well as the core committee are a combination of physical interactions and video-conferencing. Health being a state subject, states are also coming in regularly through video-conferencing to discuss preparedness at various levels with the cabinet secretary. In the midst of all this, the government is worried and rightly so. The biggest worry is what if the virus spreads to the community level.

That the government wants an isolation ward package under Ayushman Bharat-PMJAY scheme is a sign that coronavirus cases could blow up. Why else would the government look at a COVID-19 plan that would cater to the under-privileged for free, when a majority of the cases so far are linked to overseas travel and can therefore be termed well-off? Also, that ICMR has been appealing to private laboratories to test samples for free is an indicator that the government fears a significant spike in the number of cases.

We are on the right track, is what officials tracking the crisis, that has crippled all businesses, say. Former bureaucrats don’t quite disagree, for a change. One of them even compares it with the challenge of Partition. Babri Masjid riots also figure in the list of the worst crisis situations that any government has had to handle. For any administration, any situation that is too large to comprehend with too many variables is a crisis. Coronavirus too is a crisis because you just don’t know enough about it, seems to be a consensus among officials who’ve been through many tough situations earlier.

A former top bureaucrat, who’s dealt with swine flu or H1N1 in 2009, shares his experience: “While coordinating with state governments, we were able to quickly put in place a widespread surveillance apparatus. But swine flu was less lethal and also the drug, oseltamivir, worked against it. We could therefore organise quick supply of this drug to all states and the epidemic was brought under control.’’ Interestingly, even more than a decade ago, some of the top-level meetings between the Centre and the states in dealing with H1N1 were held through video-conference. With no firm treatment in place for coronavirus, this official too is worried just in case it goes deeper into the community.

At a time when “isolation” seems to be among the most used words across administrations, the following suggestion from a former bureaucrat may strike a chord somewhere: It is necessary for the government to work on a treatment protocol and distribute drugs on a large scale even if not fully clinically proven. Safeguard measures are important but may not work once the virus reaches crowded colonies or slum areas.