NEW DELHI - A decision by the Supreme Court of India to make testing for coronavirus free places an unfair financial burden on medical firms and could see a reduction in testing, with the number of tests already among the world's lowest, said business leaders and health experts.
"Humanitarian in intent but impractical to implement - I fear testing will plummet," Ms Shaw said on Twitter on Thursday about the court judgment. It said the issue of reimbursing these laboratories for running the hundreds of thousands of tests for novel coronavirus that the world's second-most populous country urgently needs would be considered later on.
These include people who have travelled overseas, people in contact with them and are showing symptoms, health workers with symptoms, hospitalised patients with respiratory problems and those who came in contact with a confirmed patient. The plan is to scale up to 20,000 tests in the next few days and eventually to 100,000 a day in the worse-case scenario.
The health sector like others parts of the Indian economy is struggling and in no position to offer a free ride, she said.