The Moving Curve

On this episode, Uma Mahadevan Nair, a civil servant in the state of Karnataka joins me to talk about her covid diagnosis and hospitalisation.

The first piece of solid research from India into how the SARS-CoV2 virus spread is also one of the largest in the world, looking at over half a million people. In this episode, I speak to Prof Ramanan Laxminarayan who led the research, and IAS officer B Chandra Mohan who is part of implementing data insights into policy.

The ICMR conducted a national sero-survey in April-May and only released the full findings in September. The paper's lead author Dr Manoj Murhekar, director of the National Institute of Epidemiology, joins me to talk about the survey's findings.

In June, I first spoke to Dr SP Kalantri, medical superintendent of a teaching hospital in rural Maharashtra, and he was waiting and watching for a pandemic that was racing through the cities. What's the view from Wardha like now that the virus has arrived? We check back in with Dr Kalantri.

States are using more antigen tests than ever, without being able to pull off the follow-up these tests need. So should the centre just throw up its hands?

New data on disruptions in routine health services raise the worrying prospect of India having set the clock backwards on health progress by years or even decades. Worst of all - there were people who saw it coming, others who know how to fix it, but there has been no movement on this yet.

Discussions about covid-19 mortality in particular break down around left/ right lines. How can new information from sero-surveys help us think independently about mortality - even if it means being on the same side as Trump supporters?

There is sometimes pushback against mathematicians who intervene in public debate around the pandemic, especially when it comes to polarised topics like mortality in India. In This episode, I interview Prof. Murad Banaji, a senior lecturer in mathematics at Middlesex University.

What's it like conducting a sero-surveillance survey during an ongoing pandemic? I talk to TIFR scientists Profs Ullas Kolthur and Sandeep Juneja about what it was like trying to go out and draw blood in Mumbai's slums and highrises.

Over two episodes, I interview Profs Ullas Kolthur and Sandeep Juneja from TIFR about the pioneering sero-surveillance survey they carried out in Mumbai. In Part 1, they explain the promises and pitfalls of extrapolating from their survey.