THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A cross section of senior doctors and healthcare professionals drawn from different parts of the world who joined an online discussion on Kerala’s Covid management strategy on Wednesday advised the government to resume economic activities in full scale as the staggering number of daily cases alone will not pose any threat to the state for the time being.
Current restrictions such as Sunday lockdown and night curfew will not do any good to control the daily count, opined the experts who suggested that the government should relax them and focus on vaccinating each and every adult at the earliest.
After reviewing the situation, the experts also hinted that the high number of daily cases reported in Kerala will drop as vaccination and disease penetration will together give society a formidable level of herd immunity very soon. As long as the number of serious cases could be controlled, there is no need to worry about the daily count, they said.
A dozen experts joined the discussion with CM Pinarayi Vijayan and Health Minister Veena George. They lauded the government for the strategies adopted so far to manage Covid and hailed the clarity of the statistics the state health department keeps with regard to the disease.
“It’s time to lift the restrictions and start economic activities. The schools should also be reopened,” said Dr T Jacob John, former professor of clinical virology, CMC, Vellore, who attended the meeting. He said Kerala need not be concerned because the number of Covid deaths, which is the most valuable metric, is low in the state. Other factors such as severity of disease and hospital bed occupancy too have been low. Health infrastructure too has not been stretched.
In the meeting, John explained the high number of daily cases in Kerala is due to better testing and containment, which other states had compromised.
Recoveries, vaccination will bring numbers under control, say experts
“There is no need to be scared of the positive numbers. It is mostly due to the better standards of testing. The numbers will definitely come down though I can’t say whether that will happen tomorrow or day after. Recoveries and vaccination will bring the numbers under control,” he said.
According to him, people from other states have better immunity as the majority got infected. But Kerala suffered due to the delta variant as most pe opl e did no t have immunity. Dr Bharath Pankhania from the UK, Dr David Peters from John Hopkins University, the US, Dr Devi Sreedhar from University of Edinburgh, Dr Ajay Mahan from University of Melbourne, Dr Sangsup Ra from ADB, Dr R R Gangakhedkar, former HO D, ICMR, and Dr Shahid Jameel were among the experts who attended the meeting.
The suggestions came at a time when the state is contributing more than 70% of the total cases in the country and the Central government has asked for more curbs to contain the spread.
“The recoveries from infection and better coverage of vaccination are two factors that could lead to the control of the current surge by mid-September.,” said Dr K P Aravindan, member of the expert committee on Covid management.
VACCINATE ALL ADULTS
Staggering number of daily cases alone will not pose any threat to the state for the time being Relax curbs such as Sunday lockdown and night curfew as they will not do any good to control the daily count Vaccinate each and every adult at the earliest.