Shahid Akhter, editor, ETHealthworld, spoke to. Dr A. Velumani, Promoter, Chairman, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Thyrocare Technologies, to know more about the challenges and opportunities associated with Covid diagnostics business.

Covid-19 : ChallengesBecause of the lockdown, the existing non-covid healthcare and diagnostics business collapsed. It collapsed to 2% suddenly within a week and it didn't allow it to resume for three months.Multiple advisory's multiple tests, whom to test and whom not to, along with plenty of show cause notice because a lot of administrators wanted to under-report positivity and some probably wanted the professional gains, so a lot of time they took in the review. These were the challenges but there were a lot of opportunities as well.

Covid-19: LearningsIn my opinion, Lockdown is not the solution, repeating lockdowns, having every different strict guideline for every different state is not the solution. It won't help to reduce. Secondly, Rapid antigen kits are useless, it doesn't solve anything so we've learned the RT-PCR is the most reliable one in the covid diagnosis.Covid-19: Government's InitiativeAlso, the government labs have contributed significantly which wasn't expected, we were all thinking it is just the private labs who are truly scaling up but government labs too scaled up and contributed more in more than 50% of the testing.

Covid-19: Immunity and antibodyImmunity matters, I don't think lockdown can stop Covid. It is the antibodies that can stop the Covid and India is blessed as only 30% tests are there per million whereas in the US there are 600 tests per million. The antibody power is important to be seen as well if not then there is a problem.

Covid-19: Towards a new normalWork from home will continue, even in healthcare, it is just 17% which is working from home. Also, there will be two different religions in healthcare that will be Covid and Non-Covid so that infection will not pass on to one covid patient to another and non-covid will not move to covid hospitals. The spending on hygiene needs to be high because the general population is scared, medical doctors are scared and the patients are scared.

Originally posted here:
RT-PCR is the most reliable test in the covid diagnosis: Dr A. Velumani, CEO, Thyrocare Technologies Ltd. - ETHealthworld.com