The Public Health Lecture Series, Dengue Project, National Centre for Biological Sciences returns on 2nd February, Tuesday, for its fifth session.

This vibrant public health webinar series kicks off in 2021 with, "The Hygiene Hypothesis and COVID-19 in India". 

In this session, we have a talk by Dr. Shekhar Mande, Director General, CSIR, and Prof. Rajeeva Karandikar, Director, Chennai Mathematical Institute, on the "hygiene hypothesis", the concept that mortality due to COVID-19 in different nations is associated with the demographic character of nations and the prevalence of autoimmunity. This talk is based on their upcoming publication in Current Science:
In the first few months of its deadly spread across the world, COVID-19 mortality has exhibited a wide range of variability across different nations. In order to explain this phenomenon empirically, we have taken into consideration all publicly available data for 106 countries on parameters like demography, prevalence of communicable and non-communicable diseases, BCG vaccination status, sanitation parameters etc. We ran multivariate linear regression models to find that the incidence of communicable diseases correlated negatively while demography, improved hygiene and higher incidence of autoimmune disorders correlated positively with COVID-19 mortality and were among the most plausible factors to explain COVID-19 mortality as compared to the GDP of the nations.

The talk will be followed by a panel discussion with Prof. Gagandeep Kang, Christian Medical College, Vellore, and Prof. Gautam Menon, Ashoka University and the Institute of Mathematical Sciences.

This session is organised jointly with IIT Goa, and is hosted by Dr. Sreenath Balakrishnan.

4pm | 2 February 2021, Tuesday

Registration: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_cMJxK7ypROSDvt6MghZdBg

Live stream: https://www.youtube.com/BLiSCIndia

More information at: https://www.ncbs.res.in/faculty/sudhir-public-health-lecture-series-national-centre-biological-sciences