Ref: ICEA/ MoHFW/ 2020/ 559
June 18, 2020
Dr. Harsh Vardhan
Hon’ble Union Minister
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare,
Government of India
New Delhi
Subject – Requesting your kind support for ensuring the mandate of the Rapid Antibody /Antigen testing; for surveillance and preliminary screening to combat the COVID – 19 epidemic effectively; for all the personnel of the Mobile and Electronics industry.
Dear Dr. Vardhan,
Greetings to you and your team from the India Cellular and Electronics Association (ICEA). For your reference ICEA is the apex industry body representing the entire mobile handset, its components eco-system and other electronics industry eco-system. All prominent manufacturers/brands from the Global and Indian industry are found under our membership fold.
Currently there is great uncertainty in the industry because of regulations regarding testing:
- Asymptomatic patients cannot be
- Only RT-PCR test can be conducted which is costly and time consuming.
The industry would like to rapidly test employees/factory workers in mass to eliminate the risk i.e. whichever employees show any signs of infection should be segregated and quarantined so that our risk goes down substantially—this testing should be very rapid, speedy and economical.
As you know, with the COVID–19 spread and the start of the lockdown; the Mobile and the Electronics industry had initially shut down all its operations including manufacturing, retail and warehousing in various States; as per the direction of the MHA, implemented by the State Administration.
With reference to the recent MHA consolidated guidelines dated 30-05-2020, whereby all the prohibited activities including retail operations; transportation, service centers and warehousing were allowed in a phased manner. The risk of spread of this SARS-CoV-2 is now much increased. With the current statistics, the number of cases in India have risen to 321K+ with 162K+ recovered cases and 9195 deaths. For the world, the number has risen to 7.55M+ infected cases with 423K+ deaths. Day by day the number of cases are on the rise and risk of getting infected has now increased several folds.
Now considering other countries’ plan of action for the detection and treating of COVID-19 cases, China had detected and imposed a limited manufacturing lockdown and rigorously did the antibody and antigen testing to find out the number of cases, isolate them and treating them simultaneously to lower the spread of the virus. This was rapid and at a mass scale covering the entire manufacturing personnel. Needless to say it was also reasonable and economical
and the cost was picked up by the government. China reached normalcy in manufacturing operations by March 2020 itself and a lot of credit for the same is given to their testing protocol and SOP’s related to manufacturing.
Similarly after seeing an initial spike of COVID-19 infections in February, South Korea implemented several measures to bring the disease’s spread under control by using text alerts and smartphone apps to share information about testing, perform contact tracing, and help doctors practice telemedicine. South Korea also used the same antibody and antigen testing in manufacturing.
Many other countries including Europe, North America etc. followed the same protocols of testing, self-isolation/quarantine and Contact tracing.
So COVID-19 testing being the most important tool around the world, makes it the most trusted way for the early detection, isolation and treatment of the infected person.
Following the same plan of action in India, the Rapid Antibody test /Antigen testing should be allowed or even made compulsory, for all the people of the Manufacturing Industry as a precautionary measure, to prevent the further spread of this virus. These tests can give the results within an hour and at a much lower cost than an RT-PCR test, making it acceptable and adaptable for Mass testing of all the concerned people in the industry. The RT-PCR test can be used as a follow up, if required as confirmatory test where infection is suspected.
We therefore would request you to kindly ensure the mandate of the Rapid Antibody /Antigen testing for surveillance and preliminary screening to combat the COVID – 19 epidemic effectively for all the personnel of the Mobile and Electronics industry at a Regulated Price for the continuity of the Supply Chain and Logistics Management, Retail and warehousing for the smooth functioning of the manufacturing/ production/ sale operations relating to Mobile and Electronics industry in various states/UT’s. We also request that the Central Government should arrange the same at their cost.
In this regard, we wish to record ICEA’s full understanding and appreciation of the situation on ground relating to the fight against COVID–19 and also at the same time functioning of manufacturing facilities on a coherent basis in strict compliance and adherence to the preventive measures as defined in the SOPs issued by the Government of India.
We therefore request your support and urgent intervention on the same.
