New Delhi (NVI): With the total number of coronavirus cases reported in India reaching 126, the Government has set up an ‘S&T Core-team on COVID-19’, of experts who will reach out to the Indian scientific community to expand their scope of finding ‘immediate and urgent solutions’ to the ongoing pandemic.
K VijayRaghavan, Principal Scientific Advisor to GoI, tweeted yesterday that there is a need for the scientific community in the country to proactively work to find a solution to the global health problem.
“It is now time for all of us, individual scientists, institution leaders and groups of institutions to get together and contribute to containing, mitigating, and pushing back this pandemic,” he said in a tweet.
The Advisor said that his office has set up “an ‘S&T Core-team on COVID-19’, of experts, who will reach out to each of the clusters, help define problems that need urgent and immediate solutions.”
He added that the experts will also work with academia and industry to help link teams to solve these problems speedily.
“This is a time for team-work. This is a time for our S&T institutions to show national and global leadership. We have concentrations of institutions & industry in the NCR, Kolkota-Kalyani, Chandigarh, Lucknow-Kanpur, Mumbai-Pune-Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyd, etc.,” he tweeted.
“These R&D hubs, linked to others, each needs to form a collaborative team and leadership. They can each while interacting, map out their strengths and what key COVID-19 problems they will address and solve in weeks, months, a year,” he added.
while exhorting the scientific community as well as academia, he said, “The goal is to make sure that our health-agencies, our science agencies, and most importantly our people and all peoples have the benefit of your knowledge, talents, and expertise speedily. Don’t hold back.”
Principal Scientific Advisor further added that in addition to the ‘top-down’ efforts of various departments and ministries, such as the Department of Biotechnology and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research etc., scientists need to proactively work together to ensure synergy and develop implementable solutions that health-workers and communities need.
Total number of coronavirus cases climbed to 126 today as one more death was reported from Mumbai today. The Health Ministry is working with other departments in the government to contain the spread of COVID-19, almost in a war footing.
