The Covid 19 pandemic will go down in the history books as one of the darkest periods this world had to ever go through. We might think that the severity of the virus was what hit the panic button, but in reality, it was something else. Indeed, we were blown away by how hazardous this disease looked; however, it was the unprecedented nature of the situation that had us in its clamps. We were facing possibly the biggest threat to our lives in a long time, and we were pretty much clueless about how to respond. Amidst this great uncertainty, nationwide lockdowns were ordered, which proved to be a step in the right direction. Nevertheless, the world remained well aware of the fact that we needed something more sustainable to beat this unknown enemy. Hence, talks about a vaccine were pursued, but the initially touted timescale for development ended up painting a grim picture. The ‘new normal’ was here to stay, after all. As the world resigned itself to reworking its day-to-day operations, the medical industry did something that would catch everyone by surprise. Within a year, we had ourselves a Covid 19 vaccine. A lot of records had to be broken to make it possible, but we were finally able to spot that ray of hope. Even though the arrival of vaccine was beneficial for us as whole, it particularly gave a much-needed breather to the diagnostic industry that was forced to stretch itself a bit too much. Unfortunately, the moment of relief was short-lived.
After a relatively quiet first half of the year, the branches that have direct business with Covid 19 are back in thick soup as a new delta variant spreads across the globe at a breakneck pace. To avoid making similar mistakes yet again, companies and medical institutions are making timely preparations so that an effective response can be dispatched without missing a beat. Leading the charge on this push-back is the diagnostic industry, where companies like Abbott, Quest, and Quidel are making aggressive attempts to scale up the current testing capacities. If we look at the numbers, we’d notice that US seven-day average for new Covid 19 cases has now clocked a staggering figure of 167,000.
The abruptness of this rise is once again threatening to overwhelm the testing facilities. What makes the scaling-up projects more important is the fact that currently over 10% of total tests are coming back positive, which is miles ahead of 2% observed in July. It’s a jump that provides strong evidence to believe that it could further grow, as the delta variant heads towards its peak.
