Remembering January 23, 2020

The student had reached kolkata on the night of January 23. She had travelled to Kochi the next day from where she went to her hometown in Thrissur.

She was 20 years, healthy but was worried. She had reasons to be.

Next day, she walked to the nearest primary health centre at Mathilakam to give her declaration.

She had been studying in the Wuhan University of china. She had left the country in a hurry as the rumour of an unknown pneumonia had just started spreading in her university. As she travelled from Wuhan to Kunming by train, she had encountered a lot of people around her in the railway station and train suffering with such respiratory symptoms.

Of course, she did not have any symptoms. But she wanted to report. She was advised to sleep in a separate room, limit contact with rest of the family members and not to venture out into public places for two weeks at least.

3 days after She developed dry cough and sore throat.

As advised on January 27, 2020, the 20 year old lady walked into the Emergency Department in General Hospital, Thrissur, Kerala.

An oropharyngeal swab was obtained on January 27, 2020 and was sent to the ICMR-National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune, for any respiratory bug. A real time reverse transcription PCR test was conducted on her swab. It was such a special lab procedure that in those days, it was limited only to few special labs and was used only when special situation demands.

On January 30, 2020, NIV, Pune reported her results specifically to the District Control Cell. Because it was positive for COVID-19 a first of its type situation for this country.

“Coronaviruses (CoV) are a large family of viruses that can cause illnesses ranging from the ordinary common cold to serious respiratory emergencies.” The lab advised.

( On January 31, 2020 she was admitted at the Government Medical College, Thrissur, Kerala.)

Neither the lab people nor the staff of the general hospital could have dreamt in their wildest imagination that in the next few days this little virus would hold the whole nation into ransom. It would shut down markets, gyms, temples, mosques and all public spaces of the whole country, push 1.3 billion peoples indoors and bring institutions like Indian railways and Airport Authority of India into a grinding halt. It will force millions of Indians working away to tread the breadth of the country barefoot because no vehicles were running and they had no jobs left in their work places.

In the one year that followed, one crore ( 10,633,339) Indians suffered on account of this small virus. Unfortunately, 153,088 of them succumbed to the virus. 150,000 Indians who on that New Years day of 2020 did not know that they won’t be able to bid farewell to that fateful year.

But the virus also empowered the health care system of this country like nothing else. It is a common experience of any medical professional of my time is that even though we would pick up each bacterium and parasite by name, but when it comes to viruses, they never had individual names. From measles, to common cold, fever to runny nose all are thrown into one omnibus bag – “Viral fever, Don’t ask names please”. It is a miracle that today we have already completed 190,148,024 tests for viruses only. We have brought testing of viruses to bed side. Soon we shall be able test a virus in our drawing room. A rarity in the previous year. Today even our children tell us about CRISPR technology which probably Ph.D. in microbiology in our time didn’t know.

Till date we looked at the US and European nations for new names in the vaccine world. All new things should come to us from across the distant sea. Today India has brought out two of the most effective vaccines against the virus. One million ( 10400014 ) health care workers have been vaccinated till this day. both the vaccines have been proved safe, effective and will be saving million lives not only in India but in countries outside India. They have been researched, tried and manufactured completely in our country.