Dr Shashank Joshi, a member of Maharashtra’s COVID Task Force, on Sunday’s ‘Mann ki Baat’ radio show of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said that there is nothing to panic about the second wave of the pandemic despite it being more threatful because “the recovery rate in this phase is also high”.
On a call with PM Modi, Dr Joshi from Mumbai said, “The second wave came very fast. It is spreading faster. But the recovery rate is also faster. In this phase, young people and children are also being infected. Symptoms are more or less similar. About 80 to 90 per cent of people do not have any symptom. There is no need to worry about mutations. The way we change our clothes, viruses too change the colour and get mutated.”
“People are starting clinical treatment late because they are thinking the symptoms will go away on their own. Also, reliance on WhatsApp forwards is growing,” Dr Joshi added, urging people to not rush after Remdesivir as “it is an experimental medicine, which may reduce one’s stay in hospital”.
Who is Dr Shashank Joshi?
Dr Joshi is a consultant endocrinologist at Mumbai’s Lilavati Hospital and is a member of the Maharashtra’s COVID Task Force. Recently, in an interview of CNBC TV18, Dr Joshi threw light on the matter of oxygen supply in Maharashtra and said that “Mumbai has passed the peak as cases are plateauing”.
“There are enough doctors in the system but there’s a shortage of critical care experts,” he said.
Further, talking about the dire situation in Delhi, Dr Joshi said that the Delhi government has done the “right thing by increasing bed capacity in hospitals and hotels”.
On vaccination, he said that people with comorbidities under 45 should be made eligible for vaccinations.
Earlier, Dr Joshi said that people have to become “more responsive” because “unless and until we get citizens’ cooperation for COVID appropriate behaviour, mandatory masking policy, zero tolerance for violators, we cannot say that the worst is over.”
“So we have to maintain some tightness in adherence to COVID appropriate behaviour and protocols,” he said.
“There was a rapid scale-up of test and when Mumbai started testing more than 50,000 cases. The test positivity rate which was, a week or 10 days back, 25 percent have now started hovering between 16-18 percent. However, in the last 3-4 days, there is a trend of a plateauing effect and we wish and pray that the worst is over,” he added.
Meanwhile, on hospitals’ bed occupancy, he said, “As far as Mumbai is concerned, we have a transparent dashboard and it still shows that there is a reasonable availability of ventilator beds, oxygen beds, and the Mumbai Municipal Corporation is working 24X7 to add more capacity.”
Dr Joshi was bestowed the prestigious Padma Shri award in 2014 for his contribution to medicine. The former dean of Indian College of Physicians has grassroots-level experience in the field of COVID treatment and allied research.
Born in Mumbai, Dr Shashank Joshi completed much of his education in the maximum city –Joshi completed his MBBS from the Grant Medical College and Sir Jamshedjee Jeejeebhoy Group of Hospitals, later on finished his MD in internal medicine and senior residency from the Seth GS Medical College and KEM Hospital. Joshi, subsequently, returned to the Grant Medical College and Sir Jamshedjee Jeejeebhoy Group of Hospitals to pursue his higher studies and completed his DM in endocrinology. A gold medalist, a topper, Joshi started his career as a faculty member at Seth GS Medical College and KEM Hospital at their endocrinology department after completing his education. Currently, Dr Joshi is associated with Lilavati Hospital and Research Centre as a Consultant Endocrine and Metabolic Physician.
A prolific writer of articles on Diabetology and Endocrinology, he has s published 18 books and 600 research publications on topics such as diabetes, obesity, thyroid disorders, osteoporosis and growth. Joshi’s studies on the Asian Indian phenotype (thin-fat Indian), co-morbidities in hypothyroidism and the impact of vitamin D deficiency on bone health in Asian Indians is praiseworthy, according to experts in the field of medicine.
Joshi is the President of two important organizations, the Indian Academy of Diabetes and the Association of Physicians of India. In 2014, the same year, he was honored with a Padma Shri, he was named as The Health Visionary Of The Year by Indian Affairs India Leadership conclave. He’s also the recipient of the International Clinician Award, received at the 21st American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) Annual Scientific and Clinical Congress, Philadelphia, among other honors.
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