What will the ‘strike team’ being deployed by US to India do amid COVID-19?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to US President Joe Biden on Monday night to convey support and discuss India’s requirements and US efforts to meet them.

The United States on Tuesday said that it will help India in all possible ways to fight the pandemic. In a White House briefing, US officials detailed the plan for support which includes, raw materials, oxygen supplies, ventilators, therapeutics, Remdesivir, testing, and protective equipment, and providing public health assistance to India, a ‘strike team’

The US has said it will urgently deploy a “strike team” to India amid the COVID-19 crisis. Officials acknowledged  that the CDC and India’s Epidemic Intelligence Services (EIS) have a long history of working together

The US said the team will work “hand in hand with India’s experts in a number of areas, including laboratory services; surveillance and epidemiology; bioinformatics for sequencing and modeling of the disease; infection, prevention, and control; vaccines rollout; and risk communication”.

The strike team will include public health experts to work in close collaboration with the American embassy, with India’s health ministries and experts, and with India’s EIS staff.

Senior administration officials said that the support from the strike team could also support India being able to immediately add residents to epidemiology class sizes to add new training experts in the Field of Epidemiology Training Program frontline cohort, where the two countries are already working together.