Talk of third wave only to deflect attention from present crisis: Virologist

Terming the comment a political gimmick, Dr Jacob John said there was enough time to think and decide about the third wave after the ongoing second wave has subsided. 

“We expected the second wave to peak around the first week of April, but cases suddenly increased from April 5. The second wave should start subsiding within a week or ten days at the most,” he said, adding that it was difficult to predicting this due to lack of information. 

Criticising that it was absurd that the pandemic was being handled by the central government’s Disaster Management Department which reports directly to the Prime Minister, he said, 

“The pandemic could have been handled better by a specially constituted taskforce consisting of a team of medical professionals not part of any government body like ICMR or National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), who would be involved fulltime in chalking out ways to control it.” 

Like how a general does not fight the war but only plans, the taskforce would have done the same, he said. The pandemic being handled by the government has resulted in a lack of transparency, which was why many professional bodies have sought more openness on how various issues relating to the pandemic were being handled, he added. 

“The lack of transparency has also resulted in a lack of sufficient data about the first wave, like how many were affected, stages of the disease, etc.,” he said, and added that this was the reason why medical professionals were unable to predict when the second wave would peak and subside.