In March 2021, when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, the world knew little about the virus but 18 months down the line, we have vaccines against the disease and a better understanding of the virus. The freedom from COVID-19 is still a long way. On this Independence Day, Dr Sandeep Budhiraja, Group Medical Director of Max Healthcare looks back at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the key lessons learnt. Dr Sandeep Budhiraja, who is a member of the Oxygen Audit Committee created by the Supreme Court, has been at the forefront of this fight from the early days of the pandemic. He performed the first plasma therapy to treat a 49-year-old COVID patient last year in April, a mode of treatment that was dropped from the list of COVID treatments earlier this year by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
