Operation Breathing Space: India-Israel

Operation Breathing Space: India-Israel

• Recently, an Israeli team arrived in India with a multi-pronged mission, codenamed Operation Breathing Space to work with Indian authorities on the Covid-19 response.

Development of Test Kits:

• India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Israel’s defense ministry research and development team are working together to develop four different kinds of rapid testing kits for Covid-19 which can give the result within 30 seconds.

Types of Tests:

• The tests include an audio test, a breath test, thermal testing, and a polyamine test.
• In the audio test, a patient’s voice would be recorded and evaluated through artificial intelligence and machine learning.
• In the breath test, the patient will blow into a tube that will detect the virus using terra-hertz (high frequency) waves.
• Thermal testing will enable the identification of the virus in a saliva sample.
• Poly amino acids test seeks to isolate proteins related to Covid-19.

India Specific Approach:

• The kits will be jointly developed after trials on Indian Covid-19 patients. The tests have already been tried on a small sample of Israeli patients.

Other Assistance:

• The Israeli team has brought robotic equipment, and wrist monitors that will help doctors and nurses monitor a patient without increasing risks of infection to themselves.
• The team has also brought 83 advanced respirators to help patients with severe symptoms.

Benefits:

• The success of rapid tests will help India’s overworked health-care professionals, who are experiencing fatigue. It will also help to address the public impatience over the Covid-19 test.
• The quicker test will help authorities to take quicker prevention measures, which will reduce the spread of the virus among people.

Way Forward

• As a vaccine or a cure is not yet visible and the country is gradually moving towards unlocking, it is time the testing should be made available on-demand as close to home as possible.
• With most cases turning out to be asymptomatic, wider and cheaper availability of testing must be a thrust area for the government now. Easy, early diagnosis of infections, even when asymptomatic, will go a long way in containment. The concerns regarding increased dependence on rapid antigen tests in some places must also be addressed.
• Further, the proclivity shown by some States and cities to conceal data has been self-defeating. There must be efforts to harvest accurate data and ease of availability. Normalcy, albeit a new one, could be reached faster with the right efforts.