“Whiling away time is ordinary; healing the world with your time is extraordinary.” – Naveen Lakkur

Ordinary people just spend their time on social media, staring at TV channels, avoid trouble, and think about their own survival. eXtraOrdinary people live and put a Little Extra effort with their time to make a difference to this world.

Story 1 – COVID-19 has got Startups to Innovate and Heal

Let us take the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s got the world to a locked-in state. People are stuck at home and not sure what to do with their time. Even if they want to do something meaningful with their time, they do not know how.

While most were figuring out ways to kill time, as it seems, the only available resource in their hands, people in the healthcare industry is trying to heal the world. They are acting against the pandemic especially during the challenging times when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 as a pandemic.

Coronavirus is a deadly virus spreading very fast and taking close to 14 days to incubate, hard to diagnose, and it is like a time bomb for mankind. The key to fighting the virus has been early and accurate testing for COVID-19 before patients begin to show the symptoms. This will not only help to treat people early but ensure the sick and healthy are separated.

The existing process is taking approximately 36 to 48 hours to provide the results and was making it more difficult. When the virus is expected to spread exponentially, the time taken to assess the suspect should be really simple and quick. It’s truly an innovation challenge.

Here is an innovation story of Roche, A pioneer in healthcare committed to improving lives since the company was founded in 1896 in Basel, Switzerland. Today, Roche creates innovative medicines and diagnostic tests that help millions of patients globally. Their professionals designed a diagnostics kit. They choose to be a little extra and utilize their limited time to create extraordinary impact with their commitment to heal this world.

On getting emergency approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (USFDA), Mr. Thomas Schinecker the CEO of Roche Diagnostics was advised to begin mass-producing the COVID-19 testing kits and also process the results. Roche said to hospitals and reference laboratories that they can run the test on the company’s fully automated Cobas 6800 and Cobas 8800 systems.

These systems are used to perform the Cobas SARS-CoV-2 test, provide test results in three-and-a-half hours, whereas the test takes at least 12-24 hours for the confirmation.

The whole world is stepping up to contain the spread of the virus. To this end, detection is important. Here is another company stepping up with its innovative work.

In India, Mylab Discovery Solutions Pvt Ltd, a Pune-based molecular diagnostics company has developed a test kit called the Mylab PathoDetect COVID-19 Qualitative PCR kit, achieving 100% sensitivity and specificity in the ICMR evaluation.

The kit was developed under the support of local and central governments under the ‘Make in India‘ initiative and is made as per the WHO and CDC guidelines. It is the first detection kit to receive Indian FDA/Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) approval that can detect coronavirus.

Mylab wants to manufacture more than 100,000 testing kits in a week that can detect viruses. Besides, these testing kits cost one-fourth of the procurement cost of kits sourced from foreign countries.

These are the timely innovation that will help the people to manage the situation of novel coronavirus attacks and enable professionals in the healthcare industry willing to be a little extra even making themselves available 24×7 to heal the people affected is indeed extraordinary.

These are challenging times and everyone has their own challenges to deal with.

While many of them don’t know what to do with their time during the lock down, some have been a little extra…as doctors treating patients, as nurses caring for patients; as paramedical forces providing the support to heal the patients; as stores and delivery agents servicing essentials; as NGO or Volunteers group, as friends and neighbours supporting the needy… Today I saw the alumni of an educational Institute creating a helpline to deliver healthy food in Delhi & Bengaluru for Covid affected members quarantined at home. Thank you for being a Little Extra, every single bit counts. Please accept our gratitude for doing your little bit 🙏