Five years after Covid-19: ICMR scientist Dr Pragya Yadav recalls pandemic days, the fightback, and making of Covaxin

A lot of memories come rushing back to mind the moment I recall those harrowing years when Covid-19 disrupted our lives. A lot of questions come to mind and so many of them remain unanswered to date. The national lockdown announced in March 2024, was primarily to prepare for infrastructure and strategies that could equip us well, in order to fight the demonic virus which had suddenly taken over our lives and wreaked havoc in the months that followed. We were scrambling for sufficiently available protective gear, essential medicines, diagnostic labs that were open way beyond their working hours, initiation of therapeutics, vaccines that could be developed on record time so as to save the millions who were at a risk of infection.

Photo: Salil Bera

Today, after five years, we are a vaccine hub with sufficient stock not just for our own people but also for other countries who turn to us for these vital life saving medicines, we have a better infrastructure, we are leading in terms of production of personal protective equipment (PPE) kits for which we were furiously scrambling back then, and we are now in a much better position than we were five years back.

The lessons we learnt in those desperate times went on to build the nation five years later. We tried, we learnt, we made mistakes, fell down, got back up on our feet and set the ground running. My only hope is that the momentum with which we worked together during the time of crisis, must take us forward from were we find ourselves today - with a line-up of projects and programmes such as prime minister's Ayushman Bharat, National Rural health Mission and National Urban Health Mission, programmes set up for a country wide digital transformation in the areas of medicine and healthcare, National Programme of healthcare for the Elderly, and more - India must march ahead as the frontrunner in the area of affordable healthcare and medical research.

I remember how an all-women team at the ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research)'s National Institute of Virology, which, back then, was the foremost institution in India to crack the genetic code of the novel coronavirus, pulled off nightmarish nights during the initial days of the pandemic when we would spend day and night at the institute in a bid to get cracking on the slightest clues that came in with the first patients landing into India from abroad. It gives me goosebumps to even recall how life was back then for our leading researchers and scientists, when the pressure to contain the virus and its spread was at its peak.

In 2021, Dr Balram Bhargava, the then director general of the ICMR, which was handling all communication and research around Covid-19 in the pandemic years, published a book titled, 'Going Viral Making of Covaxin ..The inside story.' Covaxin, was India's indigenously made vaccine to fight the novel coronavirus, and I will never forget those moments when all of us, me and our fellow scientists, spent days and nights on end trying to get the formulations right. And then to see the vaccine reach the last man standing, in the remotest of places across the country, was a great feeling.

As told to Pooja Biraia Jaiswal.