Can The Tablighi Jamaat ’s Conference be India’s Own Epidemiological Diamond Princess?

By SOMALARAM VENKATESH, MD “It has always been science versus fundamentalism, not science versus religion.” Abhijit Naskar, Biopsy of Religions: Neuroanalysis Towards Universal Tolerance On February 3, 2020, the luxury cruise ship Diamond Princess docked on Japanese shores and was promptly quarantined with 3711 people on board, because a passenger who had disembarked at Hong Kong two days earlier had tested positive for SARS-Cov-2,  or also known as  COVID-19. Passengers & crew members were either repatriated or hospitalized in Japan over the next 4 weeks. In total,, more than 700 of them were found to be infected with the virus. This was a unique opportunity – a Petri dish in a ship, if you may – for epidemiologists and virologists to study the disease and the virus.  At the beginning of this global pandemic, health care professionals and policymakers used data from the Diamond Princess experience and inferences thereof, such as infectivity & death rates, as a supplement to the observations from Wuhan. They used the data to derive models on how the pandemic will play out in the rest of the world. Later, after widespread devastation in Iran, Europe, & the United States, and after relative containment in Taiwan, South Korea & Singapore, experts have access to larger datasets & a variety of scenarios to help develop disease virulence predictions and control models.  So far, authorities in the Indian subcon...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: COVID-19 Health Policy Diamond Princess India Somalaram Venkatesh Tablighi Jamat Source Type: blogs