Kritarchy in times of Covid 19

Early this week, adjudicating on a PIL on free covid testing, the Supreme Court in India gave this judgement,

The tests relating to COVID-19 whether in approved government laboratories or approved private laboratories shall be free of cost… Private hospitals including laboratories have an important role to play in containing the scale of pandemic by extending philanthropic services in the hour of national crisis.

The reaction was only to be expected,

A DAY after they were ordered by the Supreme Court to provide COVID-19 testing free of cost, private labs have called upon the government to “come up with modalities” so that their service “remains sustainable”. Some of the leading groups, such as Dr Dangs Lab and Dr Lal PathLabs, told The Indian Express that while they “endorse” and “will abide by the Supreme Court order”, testing involves “fixed costs”, such as reagents and consumables. And in the case of COVID-19, they say, the labs have to incur the cost of providing personal protective equipment to their staff, too. At least one approved lab, Mumbai-headquartered Thyrocare, has decided to put on hold its COVID-19 testing until it receives further clarity on the situation. The firm said it had so far collected 2,000 samples.

An editorial in HT nails it,

Private enterprises, including labs, are not charities. They invest capital in setting up infrastructure; they have working capital requirements to pay their staff, pay rent, and run operations; they charge patients and then hope to recover the cost — and make profits. It is true these are exceptional times. And that is why, to their credit, private labs agreed to test Covid-19 patients at cost price — as determined by the Indian Council of Medical Research. What the court order has done is remove even this layer by not allowing private labs to charge any amount. How, then, is it possible for these labs to have the testing infrastructure, retain their employees, and run operations? In fact, the likely outcome of the court order is that at a time when India is desperately trying to augment testing capacity, private labs will scale down their operations and minimise, or even stop, testing. This will not just hurt public health objectives, but also weaken the already fragile economy further, especially if private labs decide to close operations. The same logic applies to vaccine research; billions of dollars are spent on it; imagine if overzealous courts around the world decided that a vaccine should be made available for free. Who will then defray the research cost?

Enough said. Unbelievable!