Epidemiologist Behind India’s First Sero Survey 

Dr Jayaprakash Muliyil, 74
Former principal, Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore

Last year, around this time, there was a bit of a discord in how we were hoping to tackle the virus; the official strategy was to prevent the disease from spreading, but it was practically impossible to do so. For a disease to be controlled in that manner, each family has to be isolated for a lengthy period of time and, in the Indian scenario, we just can’t. By April 15, we knew that the hope of containing the disease was simply wishful thinking. The infection had to spread.