'Lockdown For A Few Weeks': What US Health Expert Anthony Fauci Advised On India's COVID Crisis

America¡¯s top pandemic expert and the White House chief medical adviser, Dr Anthony Fauci, prescribed a number of measures that India should immediately take to take on the second wave of Covid-19 in a war footing. The three primary recommendations laid down by Fauci are an immediate imposition of lockdown for a couple of weeks, setting up of emergency units as hospitals like China and having a central organisation.

AP

Fauci, in an interview to The Indian Express, said another most important thing in the immediate is to get supplies of oxygen, medication, PPEs. He also said looking at the magnitude of the crisis, India should look at putting together a crisis group that would meet and start getting things organised. After looking at the visuals of the grave Covid crisis in India on CNN, the expert said that the country is in a ¡°difficult and desperate situation".

PTI

On lockdown

¡°One of the things you really need to do that to the extent that you can ¡ª is shut down temporarily the country, I think is important. If we want to time out and go back to what I said. There is the immediate, the intermediate, and the long range. I think the most important thing in the immediate is to get oxygen, get supplies, get medication, get PPE, those kinds of things but also, one of the immediate things to do is to essentially call a shutdown of the country," he said.

BCCL

¡°We know that when China had this big explosion a year ago, they completely shut down. And if you shut down, you don¡¯t have to shut down for six months. You can shut down temporarily to put an end to the cycle of transmission. So one of the things to be considered is to temporarily shut down. Literally, lock down so that you wind up having less spread," he said.

On emergency units

Secondly, India should follow what the Chinese did when they had a crisis, he said. ¡°You might recall, literally, within a few days to weeks they built these emergency units that served as hospitals to take care of people. It was an accomplishment that everybody marvelled at. It just seems to me, what I was viewing on television, what people were looking for a desperate need for hospital and care. That¡¯s the first thing."

Representational Image/AP

¡°Get hospitals built quickly. I mean really quickly, within a matter of ¡ª you know, they put up these field hospitals that they built during war. You should think of this, in some respects, like a war. The enemy is the virus. So you know where the enemy is, so I would make it almost like wartime because it¡¯s an emergency. And, finally, in the longer range, in a matter of a couple weeks, I would do whatever you can do to get vaccinated. To have a country like India, where two per cent of people are vaccinated, is a very serious situation. You absolutely have to get more people vaccinated.

On central organisation

Then, the Centre can mobilise different groups of government, he said. ¡°For example, what is the role of the military? Can the military come in and help? I mean, you can immediately get military help the way we, in the United States, have used our National Guard to help us distribute the vaccinations."