Accurate testing is critical to halting an outbreak. Conducting timely medical tests is the first step in containing the spread of corona virus. This is particularly important for a virus like this one, which seems able to spread before people show symptoms, or when their symptoms are mild.
Ever since the first case of Covid-19 was detected in Andhra Pradesh on March 24, the state government’s blunders in creating and distributing diagnostic testing have greatly handicapped its response to the growing pandemic. The state woefully lacked the wherewithal to conduct enough tests per day and part of this was due to a shortage of testing kits.
“There was clear lack of foresight,” TDP president and former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu pointed out. The government was very slow to roll out testing capacity to individual places — wherever that came from, it was a very bad strategy,” he noted. How many have been tested, how many testing kits are there, and how many can be tested, Naidu questioned but YSRCP dispensation dismissed these statements as political. As a matter of fact, Naidu warned the state government of signs of an impending danger in early March even before corona virus entered India, but chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy was more worried about the local body elections and ignored Naidu’s wisdom. The result: 370 positive cases and counting; 4 deaths reported so far. “I think that we could have probably controlled this, if we had effective testing,” Naidu argued and pointed out that the state government isn’t testing enough.
In a most recent letter to YSRCP president and Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, Naidu brought five key issues that require immediate attention. Of the five key issues Naidu had raised manufacture of medical equipment at the Andhra Pradesh MeDTech Zone (APMTZC) was the most significant one. The zone has the potential to become a major drug testing centre and medical devices manufacturing center in the country.
If today the testing situation in AP seems better, it is largely because of the MedTech Zone which is manufacturing rapid testing devices that give out results in 40-50 minutes unlike the PCMR testing system that takes at least five-six hours for the results. The MedTech Zone was started in 2017 when Naidu was the chief minister who was named by the Time magazine as the ‘South Asian of the Year’ in 2000 for turning Hyderabad into India’s new information-technology hub. After Naidu inaugurated the MedTech zone, the then opposition YSRCP leaders including Jagan accused the TDP government of several irregularities in MedTech Zone. “The AMTZ was the target of undue criticism and assumptions made by the YSRCP leaders who did not wish the industry to grow in the State. Today, the same party leaders are shamelessly taking credit for MedTech Zone. A project that was envisioned by our leader is now saving lives of people not just in AP but the entire nation. It was the brainchild of Naidu to host the largest medical devices manufacturing cluster in the country to immensely benefit the manufactures, patients and country in achieving low-cost quality healthcare,” senior TDP leader Devineni Uma recently said.
As the country is caught in the grip of corona virus with acute shortage of testing kits and ventilators, MedTech Zone seems to be a hope in the end of the tunnel to make the country self-sufficient in manufacturing crucial devices required to fight the battle against corona virus. MedtTech Zone is expected to produce over 10,000 rapid COVID-19 testing kits in the next one week. It is not just COVID-19 testing kits, MedTech Zone has started making ventilators, crucial for treating critical cases of Coronavirus.
