'Very few will get 'A-grade' for Covid response,' says Bill Gates as Oxford ratifies India

As the world is fighting against the coronavirus pandemic, Bill Gates, the principal founder of Microsoft Corporation, said that only a few countries will receive an 'A-grade' in their preparedness and precautionary measures taken to contain the spread of the COVID-19. He also said that if there were more investments made in the field of medicine today the world would have been better prepared for this crisis. 

In an interview with an international news agency, Gates said, "Well there is the period when I and other health experts were saying that this was the greatest potential downfall the world faced... So we will definitely look back and wish we had invested more. So that we could quickly have all the diagnostics, drugs and vaccines and so we underinvested..." 

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"We did do Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which helped with some of the vaccine platforms. But not even  5 per cent of what we could have done. Then there is the period where the virus shows up in those first few months. What were the tests prepared? Did countries think through getting their ICU and ventilators capacity up? There will be time for those post mortems. Very few countries are going to get an A grade for what that scrambling looked like. Now here we are, we didn't simulate this we didn't practice so both the health policies and economic policies, we find ourselves in uncharted territory," he added. 

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India scores 100: Study

Earlier in a study on the Government Response Stringency Index done by the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government stated that India’s response in tackling the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and imposing a 21-day nationwide lockdown on March 24 was quicker than almost every other country

India is among 18 countries with a score of 100, the highest value on the Government Response Stringency Index, which records the number and strictness of government policies to contain the spread of COVID-19. The Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) collects data from 73 countries, tracks and compares government responses to the outbreak worldwide.

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According to the study, India was quicker to take strict measures as by the time there were 500 cases its stringency index score was 90.5, which is more than many countries at that stage. India scored 100 by the time there were 1,000 cases and on the contrary, Italy touched 95 when cases touched nearly 50,000. Whereas, The United States scored 66.7, lowest among the five worst-hit countries. Italy, Spain, and France have scored 95.2. Worldwide the total confirmed cases stand at over 18,53,619 with the death toll of more than 1,14,272.

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