India had an initial surge and made an incorrect assumption over managing the pandemic, which has left the country in “dire straits”, Dr Anthony Fauci, the White House’s Chief Medical Adviser to the Senate Health, Education, Labour and Pensions Committee said on Tuesday, 11 May. “One must not undermine the situation,” he said.
“The reason that India is in such dire straits now is that they had an original surge and made the incorrect assumption that they were finished with it. They opened up prematurely and winded up having a surge right now that, we’re all very well aware, is extremely devastating,” said Fauci, as per PTI.
India recorded 3,60,960 new Covid-19 positive cases and 4205 deaths in the last 24 hours taking the country’s death toll to 2,54,197,
What Did Dr Fauci Say?
Fauci, who is also the Director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), urged the country to be prepared with regard to public health.
“Right now, it’s a terrible and tragic situation where people are dying because there’s not enough oxygen, or hospital beds. We have to try looking forward to get as much equity when it comes to public health issues as we possibly can,” he said, as per The Indian Express.
“As a lesson learned for future pandemics, we have to realise that we need to continue to build up our local public health infrastructure, which we have steep into disarray over the last decades, likely because of our successes in controlling so many diseases,” he said.
He added that countries around the world have failed to support India in fighting the COVID crisis. He noted, “ The responsibility that we (USA) have is not just for our own country. We also have to join other nations to make sure that we have access to interventions, particularly for vaccines throughout the world,” as per PTI.
Fauci explained the nature of the virus saying, “If it continues with the dynamics across the world, we have a threat in the United States, particularly with variants. You know there’s a new variant in India. So those are just a few of the lessons that we can take from what’s going on in India.”
(With inputs from PTI)
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