Covid-19: What you need to know today
This is the 18th instalment of this column. Like the two other instalments that have come on Sundays, today’s was to have focused on how Covid-19, the coronavirus disease, would affect individuals (on the two previous Sundays, the column looked at how Covid-19 would change countries and companies). That will have to wait – although it’s an important topic. The pandemic, the lockdowns, the havoc that has been wrought on communities and economies – all of it has forced people to ask fundamental questions of themselves. And so, even as many will be forced to change how they live and how they work because their companies will ask them to go – unless India, like France, gives companies a good reason to not fire people – there will be others who decide it is time to change how they live and where they work (or vice versa, or both).
It will have to wait because – Gattaca. Over the past few days, there’s been a lot of talk of the antibody test for Covid-19, and how the widespread use of this test could help get people back to work quickly (and get the wheels of economies chugging). WFH is all fine, but there’s a lot of stuff that can’t be done from home. In Italy, a debate is raging on who can and should be allowed to work. Veneto, one of the provinces of the country (Venice is located in it), is mulling antibody tests for health care workers, and then, everyone else. Those who are found to possess antibodies (of the kind that indicate they have had the disease; another kind simply shows that they are still fighting the disease -- at least that’s the theory) will be allowed back to work. Those who do not, even if they have never been infected by the Sars-CoV-2 virus which causes Covid-19 will not be – simply because the risk that they could get infected in a second wave of infections is too high.
Italy isn’t the only country speaking this language. Last week, The Guardian reported, quoting the country’s health secretary Matt Hancock, that the UK is considering so-called immunity passports – certificates, based on antibody testing, that show that people have antibodies against Covid-19, which means they have had the disease – as a way to decide who gets to go back to work. The Guardian also reported that the idea seems to be derived from Germany, where researchers are readying a large-scale study to decide, again, based on immunity, who gets to be exempt from lockdown restrictions.
Other countries will also have to do this – even as researchers everywhere try and answer questions about antibody testing, which is less expensive, and also much less complicated than the PCR tests used to identify cases of Covid-19. Antibody testing is also based on bloodwork – something every neighbourhood path lab in India knows how to do.
An announcement on antibody testing in India is imminent, HT’s health editor tells me. Its usage here is likely to be different – in clusters, to identify those with infections (although the antibodies show up after a lag, usually), rather than as a way to decide who is safe, and who isn’t.
Which brings us to Gattaca, perhaps the best science-fiction movie ever made. It revolves around eugenics and the ethics of it and is set in a world where certain jobs are reserved for genetically superior people (called the valids). The others, the invalids, are not allowed to perform such jobs. One can argue that immunity passports are more about protection than reservation, but it is likely, if they are adopted, that they will be used not just to decide who gets to work, but also who gets to travel, and, perhaps, do other things as well. The world will now be divided between those who are immune to the coronavirus and those who are not.