Like many countries, India acted on the pandemic with measures that ranged from the abrupt and draconian to well considered and reasonably informed.
It is now more than 100 days since lockdown began on 23 March. The initial impact was harsh and affected the large number of daily wage workers in cities the most. Charitable groups housed them in dormitories and provided food packets.
When the lockdown was eased, the state was wrong-footed again as this migrant community headed home by any means of transport, without properly-organised trains and buses.
Each of India’s thirty states has its own restrictions and the norms differ to cater for local conditions. The economy is hit, and while work restrictions are being lifted it is difficult to predict what sort of normalcy will come back. It is fair to say that preparations were poor, but civil administration has coped. Importantly, mortality was initially low, for reasons not yet understood. Rural areas were also initially relatively disease-free.
Engineering response
Engineers and scientists have taken wonderful initiatives in this period, often working from home and in virtual teams. Companies and institutions both large and small have contributed to the effort to combat the pandemic in myriad ways.
The first initiatives focused on organising hospital space and trying to deal with the shortage of personal protection equipment (PPE) for hospital staff. Many institutions with in-house hospitals, like Hindustan Aerospace, railway and defence services, arranged wards and spaces for Covid-19 patients to be used by public health authorities.
The Indian Railway’s workshops, including many IMechE members, quickly converted some 5,000 air conditioned sleeper coaches into care units and stabled them at various locations for hospital overflows.
Several groups who have designed from scratch or sped up existing work have prototyped and tested new hospital equipment in a few weeks, meeting regulatory requirements. Standards and quality objectives were adhered to and never abandoned. The range of equipment is wide, from PPE gels and UV sanitisers and inexpensive throwaway bag respirators, through to supportive breathing devices with additional features, to full-scale ICU invasive ventilators.
The press highlighted the activities of two honorary fellows. Dr Pawan Goenka, managing director of automotive firm Mahindra and Mahindra, fast-tracked a major project to manufacture affordable respirators. The Tata Group and trusts led by Ratan Tata donated $200m for PPE and test kits. Meanwhile, engineers in Tata Motors – many of them our members – worked to build robots to sanitise hospitals.
Biotech companies provided test kits for the virus within weeks, ready to be manufactured.
Virologist Minal Dakhave Bhosale made headlines after producing a kit from scratch, based on the genetic code of the virus that Chinese scientists shared on the internet. Just one hour after receiving certification for manufacture, the pregnant researcher checked into hospital and delivered her daughter. Mother and child are reportedly doing well and the kit is being manufactured.
From ideas to products
During the past two months, Covid-19 related work has been the focus of many research groups in India’s premier engineering and scientific universities – the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore (IISc) and the 23 Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT).
Through proof of concept and regulatory approvals, ideas have been quickly converted to products, which are being built by a group of industrial entrepreneurs. There are so many of these that it is simply not possible to list them all, let alone discuss the science and engineering underlying the discoveries and inventions.
To mention a few from IISc and IIT Bombay (the distinguished engineer who chairs our Process Industries Division India centre is dean of research at the latter):
- Both are working on further areas of low-cost ventilators as well as sanitising equipment and processes using gels and UV light
- IISc has established a manufacturer for ‘tunnels’, through which materials can be sanitised, and smaller mobile sanitisation units as well
- IITB similarly has developed a large-scale and portable room sanitiser for hospitals
- There is work being done on mobile applications in both institutions, which could be useful in collecting anonymised data related to pandemic spread and virus tracing.
- Various vaccine development research activities are taking place. IISc also has an approved testing facility for COVID-19 samples.
Positive realisation
While reduced pollution during lockdown has once again revealed distant mountain ranges that were hidden from faraway villagers for decades, it has also provided the realisation that India is a genuine powerhouse in the development and production of innovative molecular synthesis in biotech.
People are surprised to discover that two-thirds of the globe’s infants are immunised against disease by the Serum Institute of India, and that relatively inexpensive drugs for the fight against HIV and AIDS have been coming from another manufacturer’s production line.
Even more encouraging is that three of the important developers and manufacturers of vaccines against Covid-19 are led by women. They are being toasted by a locked-down country. Even better, the central government and venture capitalists are keen on supporting their research and production efforts.
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