Despite the Prime Minister's assertion in his speech on 25th March that that we will defeat corona in 21 days, the ICMR did not issue any statement in its favour. Even after Dr. Vinod Paul, a member of NITI Aayog said that there will be no Corona case in our country after 16 May, the ICMR did not come out with any statement in his support. ICMR was very forthright in giving scientific opinion on the spread of COVID since March.

But to everyone’s surprise the medical body virtually disappeared from the press briefings in the month of May onwards. The press briefings were entirely overtaken by the bureaucrats who did not feel shy to answer even the technical medical questions even though the people in this health emergency expected to hear scientists’ opinion about the disease pattern. It is however a different matter that these bureaucrats also have stopped giving any briefings now and there has been no official briefing to the press after 11th June.

The bureaucrats are trained to carry out the government’s orders, but the scientists have to speak on evidence. What the epidemiologists, virologists and the professionals from preventive and social medicine said is proven as we watch rising number of cases and reduced doubling time for COVID cases. The fear of the disease and wish for an early treatment to it is seen from that the people believed completely unscientific and absurd statement on the Covanil by Baba Ramdev as treatment of COVID.

To allay the concerns about the disease the whole global medical community is seized with developing preventive or curative treatment for COVID-19. Scientists around the world have been working to find vaccine for its prevention. The news that Indian scientists have almost hit the vaccine and it will be released by 15 August was very heartening and a matter of pride for the nation. Our genius scientists have been working hard to control the course of the disease. But that the vaccine will be out in almost a month raised skepticism, as it did not appear to be holding ground on scientific criteria.

The vaccine production has to pass through several stages of clinical trials. Every phase of clinical trial takes several months to be completed with accurate results. Vaccine trials are an extremely serious matter even more than drug production because vaccine is to be injected into a healthy person. If the vaccine produced showed negative results it would mean that a healthy person is being made sick. Therefore trials of vaccine have to be very meticulous. The MD of Biotech Ltd. Dr Krishna Ella, who has been entrusted with the job of vaccine production, in an interview said that they will be able to produce the vaccine by December. He was non-committal about the 15 August date. In the first letter on 2nd July the Director General ICMR Balram Bhargav had asked the hospitals involved in the trials to be on fast track and enrol all participants in the trial before 7 July 2020. His letter further warned that ‘noncompliance will be viewed very seriously’. This language is totally unpalatable and unexpected of a person of that stature.

But after the questions were raised by scientists that such speedy trials would compromise accuracy and efficacy of the vaccine, the ICMR issued another statement on 4th July that they did not mean 15 August to be the deadline, but this was to get the matter speeded up. On 6th July the Ministry of Science and Technology issued a statement that vaccine production is not possible before 2021. These events have brought the credibility of the ICMR into a very precarious situation. We are proud of our scientists. A top level person like Balram Bhargav cannot be unaware of the complexities of vaccine production. What led to issuing such statement is best known to him, but it has definitely put a question mark on the uprightness of a scientific body.

Science is not a political game. The fear that ICMR was under duress to give statement is not unfounded. Whatever has happened is very sad and such a thing should not be repeated. Science has said nothing to do with preconceived ideas or with political ambitions. The scientists have to raise their voice against any misleading information. The feebleness in the reaction by the scientific and medical bodies to the absurd statements like transplanting an elephant head on human body in ancient India or that we had highly advanced space science 7000 years back and many similar ones is intriguing. We are successors of Aryabhatt, Galelio, Copernicus and Jagdish Chander Bose who stood by what they felt to be true on evidence. (IPA Service)