India was fortunate to escape the fatality and severity experienced by countries like the USA, the UK and Italy in the first wave."

"This fortunate collective escape led to the misconstrued notion of complacency among every stake holder -- government, policy makers and to some extent, few in the scientific community who started talking about herd immunity."

"As a result, the second wave which was inevitable and could be foreseen seemed to have surprised everyone," says Dr Vikash R Keshri, an expert in public health and health policy.

Read the interview with Rediff.com's Archana Masih