Immediately shut down the country for a few weeks: Top US health expert to India

Washington: No one likes to lockdown a country, but the situation in India is so dire that it calls for a total shutdown of the nation, said Dr Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the Joe Biden administration in the US, on the worsening COVID crisis in the sub-continent. "Literally, lockdown so that you wind up having less spread. No one likes to lockdown the country. Well, that’s a problem when you do it for six months. But if you do it just for a few weeks, you could have a significant impact on the dynamics of the outbreak," Fauci, one of the most trusted and sane voices in the fight against the global pandemic, told in an interview to the Indian Express. 

Fauci also emphasised on the need to vaccinate everyone in the country. He drew a plan—the immediate, the intermediate, and the long range—to tackle the deepening crisis in India. The immediate focus should be on taking care of people right now. "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... I would think that you’ve got to get some sort of a commission, or an emergency group to make a plan how to get oxygen; how do we get supplies; how do we get medications, and call—maybe with help from WHO—countries," he said. 

"It seems to me it’s a desperate situation. So when you have a situation like that you’ve got to look at the absolute immediate. For example, vaccinating people right now, which you absolutely must, must do—it’s essential—is not going to alleviate the immediate problem of people needing oxygen, needing hospitalisation, needing medical care. That’s not going to fix it now because vaccinating people today, it’s going to be a few weeks before you alleviate the prevention of other people getting sick," he observed. 

Fauci also called for other countries to help India. "Now is the time (for) other countries to try to alleviate the immediate problem that India has. That’s the first thing."

He also batted for a strategy to tackle the virus on a war-footing. Get the military to distribute vaccines, build field hospitals quickly similar to the ones during war-time, he said. "I think you need—what the Chinese did when they had a crisis, you might recall, literally, within a few days to weeks they built these emergency units that served as hospitals to take care of people." That will be a quick remedy to India's crumbling health care infrastructure problem.

And finally, get more people vaccinated. "Address the absolute immediate problem, get the intermediate things going, and then take a look at the longer range in regards to vaccines."

While Dr Fauci's words were measured in order to avoid any political controversies, he said that India rushed to declare victory over the virus. "I think one of the things that maybe should have been recognised, that victory was declared maybe too prematurely," he said.