KK Shailaja received global recognition for containing Covid in Kerala. But how did she do it?
BBC News, Delhi
As a physics teacher, scientific thinking always remained an integral part - a "default position" - to Ms Shailaja's decision-making process as the health minister, she told the BBC. "In my mind, Covid-19 reaching India was always inevitable and dealing with it was a matter of when, not if," she says.
In a pandemic characterised by extreme uncertainty, Ms Shailaja said the government used its Nipah virus protocol - the state had successfully fought an outbreak in 2018 - "and made changes based on what was already understood about Covid". "Containment was the only way forward," she said, and the state decided to stick to the playbook of test, trace and isolate.Authorities in Kerala set up extra hospitals way before cases spiked in 2020
. Infections surged and showed no signs of abating even as the pandemic waned in other parts of the country - although the death rate remained low.Experts said Kerala's contact tracing mechanism, which had been its strong point during the first wave, had not shown the same efficacy in the second phase. Many said Kerala had also made the mistake of allowing festivals to go ahead, leading to mass gatherings.
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