On May 25, three medical professional associations submitted a joint statement to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, criticising India’s respon...
On May 25, three medical professional associations submitted a joint statement to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, criticising India’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, and, in particular, the lockdown. The statement also contained several recommendations for course correction.
Two of these associations had submitted a similar statement, albeit less elaborate and gentler in tone and tenor, in April too.
Among a range of serving and retired government scientists and physicians, one of the signatories to the statement is DCS Reddy, who heads the research group on epidemiology and surveillance constituted by the Indian government’s National Task Force for Covid-19 headed by Niti Aayog member, Vinod Paul.
The priority task assigned by the task force to the group at the time of its formation on April 6 was to study the “basis for lockdown/partial lockdown”. The nationwide lockdown, initially put in place on March 25 for three weeks, was extended several times. But Reddy said: “We were not consulted for extending or modifying the lockdown. Those decisions were taken by the National Task Force headed by Dr Vinod Paul.”
Reddy, a former professor and head of community medicine at the Institute of Medical Sciences at Banaras Hindu University, was a signatory to the previous statement too – he is a member...
