I have not been into a closed air space since last March without a respirator with cloth mask & shield.

I donot even think of eating in a restaurant or going to a movie theatre because I have known this. https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1390765915621441541

So many of us have been talking about airborne transmission for a over a year now.

We understand that the risk of airborne transmission is very high in closed airspace, in open only if the viral load is too high due to overcrowding.

I know for a fact that unless we understand Covid & its variants better & live time & efficacy of vaccines in real terms (with data transparency) against each, we will be stuck up in cyclical repetition of waning & spikes.

What would be my advise on a national level -1) Test, Trace, Isolate should be drillers into every single citizen. Testing & catching infection should not be stigmatised individually or politically. Catch the spread early. Isolate immediately. Set protocols to let that happen.

2) Have robust data collection, transparent sharing with research & clinical teams on all aspects - Infection, contact tracing, clinical modalities, clinical response, clinical management, genetic sequencing, vaccine trial, development & efficacy. Transparency is key.

3) Genetic sequencing capacities should be enhanced, serological & actual live time impacts of vaccines should be monitored. Aim to vaccinate As Many, As Fast & with Most efficacious vaccines.Vaccine nationalism or interests of individual developers needs to be put on back burner

4) Re-set the expectations of businesses, people & even leadership about getting back to the Pre-Covid normalcy for eg - we are not any closer to dining in restaurants or closed space gatherings or movie & gyms, Reset these expectations.

5) Please do away with unproven treatments like plasma (which have serious harm potential) or approval to vaccines or drugs without following strong protocols for safety & efficacy data
This knee jerk is doing more harm than good. Look at steroids they work but cause Mucormycosis

The fuss is coming from the fact that govts & premier health bodies like WHO & CDC have been living in denial of airborne spread (which was evident from the first few massspreader events we closely studied in the west) & because of that masses had been given wrong expectations

If our public health & infectious disease principles had been sound globally we would have focused on understanding the spread with the same intensity with which we focused on studying repurposed drugs as well as developing vaccines.
All of these need to go hand in hand.

I am repeating this again, if we donot want to be stuck up in this situation for the next year or so - WE NEED EFFICACIOUS mRNA VACCINES & WE NEED TO DO AWAY WITH UNSCIENTIFIC CLINICAL MANAGEMENT PROTOCOLS.

Ans on the research & vaccine development end we need to quickly understand need for boosters, differences in response towards different variants of inactivated, mRNA vaccines.

And this data CANNOT be in form of press releases like Covaxin after which we see no data.