Ever since the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, India’s scientific research community has been voluntarily and silently working together to make sense of how the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus has been spreading through the country vis-à-vis the rest of the world, where multiple devastating waves have left a pall of gloom. Despite little or no funding help from both the Centre and state governments, they’ve continued in the hope of finding solutions:  On April 29, the community, it appears, reached breaking point.  

With India finding itself in the middle of a deadlier second Coronavirus wave, which had left the health infrastructure in shambles, scientists and researchers sent out an open appeal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “While new pandemics can have unpredictable features, our inability to adequately manage the spread of infections has, to a large extent, resulted from epidemiological data not being systematically collected and released in a timely manner to the scientific community,” the appeal read.