Varsha Venugopal

we were able to progress despite the COVID-related lockdowns.

I think the bigger one was just motivation of our team members and for us to ensure we did, you know, weekly some version of hanging out in the pub with all our team members to ensure we all continued to be motivated and focused.

Yeah.

And in India, the COVID phase was quite bad.

So it was not just about working from home.

Pretty much everyone was also personally affected with their family members.

So it was quite hard for extended periods of time to be stuck in your room or your home to continue being motivated and then get these negative messages about your friends and families and networks.

So I think as a team, we had this Jaya Pakoda Zoom event every Friday or every second Friday.

And that was quite useful for a lot of us to not talk work and to be able to talk to each other.

I think more generally for me personally, just I guess meditation, exercise, all the common ones definitely helped with sanity.

I think, thankfully, not any major ones yet, but the one we do recognize as a distraction is the mission drift, which was quite real with these potential COVID vaccine.

We had a lot of interest from funders to see how we could respond to that, for instance.

And again, having colleagues within CE and otherwise nudging us to continue remaining focused has been hugely helpful.

I think that's the biggest one for us so far in terms of potential mistakes or almost mistakes that have been distracting us from our core focus.

Yeah, so we know, for instance, measles is six times as infectious as COVID.

And there have been real challenges with potential outbreaks of measles.

So I think once we had more data coming in on how COVID was then having an impact on routine immunization and also a lack of clarity on how our programs could be most impactful on COVID made it easier for us to refocus on routine immunization.

Having said that, it's still an ongoing question for us on whether there are some low-hanging fruits areas we could impact in terms of COVID response.

I think one experiment I have done over the last few years, which has served me well, is around putting myself in uncomfortable situations.

It's almost like building a muscle.