‘No Time to Hide COVID 19’
Our Correspondent
A coffee table and paperback book, No Time to Hide COVID 19 was presented to the Vice President Dr M Venkaiah Naidu today at his residence by the author Ashok Nilakantan aka TN Ashok
The 376 page paperback book chronicles the history of SARS COV 2 and its journey as a pandemic across the globe. How India led the developing countries in containing the disease is a special 30-page feature of the book highlighting the one billion jabs and medical aid to 150 countries. How the team India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi acted rapidly to contain the scourge through socio cultural and economic measures is another highlight.
The book is authored by 68-year-old veteran journalist Ashok Nilakantan Iyer aka TN Ashok and published by the Notion Press of Chennai. The author was Editor (Economics) of PTI and is now the Executive Editor of Pune Based Corporate Tycoons and the Belagavi/Bangalore based Flag Post.
Dedicating the book to the health care specialists, doctors and nurses, who fought the disease day and night not caring for their lives, Dr Venaiah Naidu appreciated the author’s efforts in bringing out a comprehensive book on the disease highlighting India’s steps in combating the disease. The words biggest inoculation drive of one billion jabs of COVAXIN (Bharat Biotech), indigenously manufactured and COVISHIELD (Serum Institute of India (SRI) is highlighted in the book besides WHO’s recognition of COVAXIN.
Also highlighted in the book is the yeoman service of the Prime Minister to make available the vaccines and health support systems to over 150 countries, which included Asian nations from Sri Lanka to Bangladesh and Canada in North America and Australia in Australasia. The book details the One trillion-rupee package announced by the government to aid industries, MSMEs affected by the pandemic and to resurrect the economy.
The book will serve as a reference guide for many students on the history of the disease, which broke out, in the WUHAN city of the Hubei province of China first and came to be notified as a pandemic by the WHO in January 2019. How the world combated the disease as vaccine manufacturers brought out several vaccines to contain the disease even as several new variants broke out is well researched and detailed in the book, the book editor M K Vijayaraghavan said.
The author Ashok Nilakantan said: “I have not done anything new but only taken effort in assembling all the material available on SARS COV 2, its outbreak in Hubei in China, and how it quickly spread across the world like a forest fire. How each of the worst affected countries from USA , UK to France, Germany, Italy, Spain, China and Russia took drastic measures, economic and medical to contain the disease, that virtually crippled the healthcare system of the world”.
There is a collection of some 30 articles I wrote for Corporate Tycoons (Pune) from the onset of the disease and how it devastated the economies of the world and how they all recovered through governmental support, the author said. There are case studies of each of the European countries included in the book.
I have added speeches made by UN Secretary General Dr Antonio Gutteres to the member nations, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus advice to countries, and special interview with WHO Chief Scientist Dr (Ms.) Sowmya Swaminathan on in house UN TV on precautionary measures to be taken, he said.
At the last count as on March 23, 2022, as the WHO dashboard indicates, the number of deaths due to Covid 19 and its variants delta touched 48.02 million infected cases leading to 6.12 million deaths. As of March 26, 2022, 11,054,362,790 vaccines doses had been administered. In India nearly 4, 30, 19,453 (4.3 million) cases were recorded and nearly 4 lakh perished. The recovery rate was quite high in India as compared to other nations of the world. Spanish Flu that broke out during the First World War infected 50 million people leading to five million deaths. The world’s worst disease Smallpox that started in the 5th century BC in Egypt lasted until the early part of the 20th century and it had killed 500 million people. The disease is now completely eradicated by massive inoculation globally.
The book is going up for sale by Notion Press on online platforms such as Amazon globally, Flip kart and its own NP platform in Chennai. Besides, the book will be available in 150 countries through WH Smith and Kobe and 3500 retail outlets in India.
For further details: Contact the author Ashok Nilakantan Iyer aka TN Ashok on
Mobile +91 98101 88700 / WhatsApp +91 9840926796: [email protected]