Venu Madhav Chennupati (Epidemiologist) runs a Healthcare IT firm in Hyderabad and K R Satish (Social activist) founder of Brilliant school in Hyderabad. During the second wave of COVID-19 in May 2021, the two activists started to discuss the Covid-19 vaccine's shortage, the distribution process of the vaccine, and prioritizing vaccinations by exposure and not by age groups.
Venu being a trained epidemiologist from Harvard University was monitoring and analyzing scientific data of COVID-19 cases. He felt that the population-based distribution of the Covid-19 vaccine was not a successful model in controlling the spread of coronavirus., especially the R0. R0 (referred to as "R nought") is a mathematical term that indicates how contagious a disease is. Venu suggested in his publication that the governments need a different model to tackle coronavirus spread, and that will bring the R0 down. He wanted the Indian governments to first vaccinate front-line economy workers and control the spread, instead of vaccinating by age demographics. (https://cvmadhav.medium.com/why-vaccinating-the-frontline-workforce-should-be-prioritized-d85103c06f)
KR Satish has broad experience in solving ground-level problems. He quickly understood the practical problems of vaccine shortage and coronavirus infection spread rate. He felt that more susceptible people that are in society were delivery persons, bank staff, street vendors, shop owners, or anyone who deals with customers directly. They are more likely to contract with the coronavirus and spread infection. So, the government should re-prioritize vaccinations by people with more social exposure, and not by age.
Both started communicating with the various ministry of health at Federal and State levels through emails on this issue and videos were also circulated on social media for this awareness, but they didn’t find much response on this. Finally, they had filed a petition for Public Interest Litigation (PIL in Telangana High court (WP(PIL)SR 16115/2021), India. This PIL was the first of its kind demanding vaccinations for frontline economic workers and emphasized the need for vaccinating these people on priority for the smooth running of the economy and to create a kind of barrier against the spread of covid -19 in the society. After filing a petition in the court, the Telangana High court had sent notices and summoned the State government for an instant reply. Interestingly, the state government implemented the Venu and KR Satish approach instead of answering the Telangana High court. Due to this spreading rate of R0, in Telangana state could be controlled in a better way. Telangana is the only state in India where all super spreaders are vaccinated.
There are countless stories of people from all walks of life who did their bit to fight the unprecedented health crisis due to the second wave of Covid-19. And some of such stories are now being shared everywhere and we need to acknowledge the contributions of these ordinary citizens. Venu and Satish through their silent work behind the scenes had made a positive difference in fighting the pandemic.
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Venu Madhav
