'Economic rescue package crucial to look at healthcare business continuity beyond Covid-19'

Amid country-wide lockdown, sustaining costs is becoming a concern with the rising number of novel coronavirus cases for healthcare providers. Hospitals in India are currently reaching out to the banks to take working capital loans which is at least at a 9.5 per cent interest rate, said Dr Harish Pillai, CEO at Aster DM Healthcare India, while discussing how hospitals are coping with the impact.

Acknowledging the emergency measures taken by the state and central government, Dr Pillai said, that the national wide lockdown was important because otherwise, doctors are always under pressure to manage the regular cases.

Sharing views on whether the lockdown should be continued or staggered, he said that the daily data on the new cases coming across in India is the most important indicator of a disease outbreak. “The speed of transmission is still substantial in India as we don't see any relevant data indicating flattening of the curve. So I would rather worry if the lockdown is lifted after April 14. We need to keep the lids till April 30th for sure, perhaps be extended to May."

However, like all other sectors, healthcare businesses too are facing troubled times in managing operational cost as the lockdown has caused huge hit in terms of outpatients and inpatient revenue. Sharing the mitigation measures taken by Aster DM Healthcare India, Dr Pillai said, “the biggest chunk of the cost is the manpower cost. Our effort has been to focus and protect the frontline workers whether it is clinicians, nurses or the paramedical staff, the rest of us right from the CEO to the admin category will all have to tighten our belts.”

Seeking government's support, Dr Pillai stated that there has to be some fiscal measure for the large sector of formal employers as we are under great economic stress. “There has to be some comprehensive rescue package for all sectors to look at business continuity beyond quarter one of this financial year.”

While discussing about the measures taken by the centre and state, Dr Pillai pointed out how Kerala is managing the coronavirus cases effectively, “The big advantage we have in managing the Covid-19 crisis was our institutional memory of handling the Nipah outbreak. The kind of protocols which we used to manage the Nipah cases has helped us as a big team."

Kerala is the first state in India to encounter the novel coronavirus and has the best recovery rate as compared to other Indian states, which experts believe is because of its early identification systems and specialised Covid-19 care wards.

According to him, much before the Wuhan news stories started coming up, command system which is a monitoring mechanism connected to the Chief of Medical Services across India was already operationalised.

Citing theories predicting why rate of transmission not been so high in India, like climatic conditions, India being a malaria-endemic country with substantial use of anti-malaria drug hydroxycholoroquine and also the use of BCG vaccination across the country, Dr Pillai clarified saying these are not evidence-based and hence we need to be very careful in our approach against novel coronavirus.

He further added that India can learn lessons from Spanish flu of 1918 epidemic in which the first disease clusters were the Indian ports which proved that the risk of transmission is a lot greater, wherever you have travel hubs.