Biocon MD says India should have drive-through COVID-19 tests like UAE 

Biotechnology industry veteran Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw in the backdrop of the global coronavirus outbreak says, India should step up research on communicable diseases and get into vaccine production in a big way.  The Chairman and Managing Director of Biocon also urged the government to rope in the private sector to boost diagnostic capacity to deal with the COVID-19 cases.

"Now we realise that it cannot be contained so easily," said Shaw on the World Health Organisation's assessment that COVID-19 can be characterised as a pandemic.

According to her, the response of the US and Europe has been very slow in containing it.

"Now that they are responding, they realise that it has spread quite a lot", Mazumdar-Shaw told in an interview.

What's even scarier is that there are not enough diagnostic kits available (in major coronavirus-affected countries) for quick diagnosis, she said."You can't even do mass screening. Even in a country like the US, even though people are exhibiting all these symptoms, they are basically taking chest x-rays and quarantining them. They don't have enough kits to really deal with every case. So, it's quite worrying, because you can see how it's surging," Mazumdar-Shaw said.

Countries like China and parts of Asia such as Singapore have contained it, she noted.

In India, the coronavirus positive cases are low at the moment, but one has to wait and see how far it can be contained, she said, adding companies in India are taking immediate rapid response steps.

Sharing a video about UAE's first drive-through COVID-19 testing facility, Biocon MD Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw tweeted that India should also have "drive-in tests". With such tests, one can get a nasal/throat swab taken while remaining seated in their cars, to have them tested. Meanwhile, the media reported that a private lab in Delhi will begin drive-through COVID-19 tests.