Change in community behaviour driven by transparency in information and clear communication through official and social media platforms.

Stewardship of the central government and decentralisation of decision-making capacity to the local authorities.

Existing laboratory networks.

Established telecommunication infrastructure with a high internet penetration rate.

Challenges related to inventory control of personal protective equipment (PPE) and medications.

A limited supply of medical equipment such as ventilators and PPE.

.COVID-19 related rumours and fake news.

Strengthening of coordination between various healthcare bodies at both local, national and global level.

Updating the ‘Pandemic Playbook’ with the testing, training and quarantining strategies for better disease management.

Establishing integrated platforms such as testing laboratories and electronic medical record system within routine health infrastructure, which can improve utilisation during public health emergencies.

Coordination between government ministries, public health institutions and national and international regulatory agencies.

Intersectoral collaboration between government, private sector, media and armed forces.

Synergies between various cadres within the health systems such as community health workers and primary care providers.

Large scale application of digital health technologies such as teleconsultation, scheduling, payment portal and smartphone application for contact tracing.

A paucity of trained public health professionals, especially in epidemiology and outbreak investigation.

Fragmented service delivery structure with poorly managed health information system.

High burden of malnutrition, malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis which already overwhelm the health systems.

Unprepared international travel infrastructures such as airports and land borders.

Technological limitations related to smartphones of the end-user such as internet connectivity and availability of the required application.

Privacy and data ownership issues.

Empowering communities by engaging them in disease outbreak prevention and containment strategies.

Training and engaging the informal service providers such as AYUSH and community-based pharmacy professionals for pandemic prevention and response.

Expansion of digital health technologies for contact tracing, inventory, and supply chain management for medication, equipment and vaccines.

Ethical use of data and patient information.

Developing service delivery infrastructure using digital health technologies for prevention, treatment and follow-up of non-communicable diseases and mental health.

Expanding inventory and strengthening of the supply chain to enable timely availability of medication and equipment.

Well established network of primary health centres that ensured proper patient-centred care.

Weak public health infrastructure that can learn and adapt using previous experience.

Potential delays in delivering care to other essential services (such as maternal and child health, non-communicable diseases and elective surgical procedures) due to the dispersion of human resource and physical infrastructure.

Developing robust disease surveillance and reporting mechanism.

Building trust of the population in the health system.

Developing a health workforce with an appropriate skill-mix that includes specialist, clinical and para-clinical workers, frontline health workers and trained informal service providers.

Building resilience of the routine health systems by increasing investment in primary healthcare and integrated care system infrastructure.