It has nine branches at Alwar, Bengaluru, Trivandrum, Calicut, Coonoor, Jagdalpur, Patna, Rajahmundry and Varanasi to advise the respective state governments on public health.

The Institute was also entrusted the task of developing reliable rapid economic epidemiological tools which could be effectively applied in the field for the control of communicable diseases.

The objectives of the Institute broadly cover three activities - training, service and operational research in the field of communicable diseases and their prevention and control in the country.

[6][7] By February 2021, the National Centre for Disease Control found a new mutated strain E484Q of SARS-CoV-2 in the state of Maharastra that was previously thought to be coming from South Africa and Brazil.

This will lead to long-term public health collaboration between the Government of India and the United States in many areas including establishing high quality research and surveillance on important human infectious diseases, establishing the Indian Epidemiological Intelligence System program, and developing the National Centre for Disease Control as an international nodal agency in South Asia.