Narrative Reviews
COVID-19: a boon or a bane for the microbiologists

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmmb.2021.12.020Get rights and content

Abstract

Background

In the situation where COVID-19 pandemic has placed unprecedented demands and pressure on the health care system, we wanted to analyze how the medical microbiologists of our country were affected. Was it actually an opportunity to showcase the specialty or was it a doom? A debate was organized as a key session in the national e-conference of the Indian Association of Medical Microbiologists, held on 10 December 2020.

Objectives

The objective of the debate was to examine and analyze the various positive as well as negative impacts of COVID-19 on the discipline of the medical microbiology of our country.

Content

Before the debate a voting session was conducted to assess the opinion of the audience followed by a very interesting debate where both the speakers presented their view points. The points in favor of the discipline were, mainly up-gradation of the specialty of microbiology in terms of learning, skill development, infrastructure, networking & research opportunities related to COVID-19. While the main points against were, nerve wracking work load without much acknowledgement, performance pressure from hospital administration to maintain rapid turnaround time, and a forceful neglect of all other infectious diseases like tuberculosis and antimicrobial resistance which were the key battle fields of the medical microbiologists. Postgraduate & even undergraduate training programs got completely derailed to their disadvantage. By the end of the debate, it was concluded that COVID-19 was neither a boon nor a bane to the microbiologists. A balanced approach to the problem in hand is required without ignoring the pre-existing infectious diseases in our country. The post debate voting swayed the audience considerably for it to be a bane & the faculty debating for boon had a huge margin to begin with but finally won with a whisker indicating the intensity of the debate.

Section snippets

Why COVID-19 is a boon for microbiologists

The dictionary meaning of the word “boon” is something beneficial to a specific person, entity or cause. The most important point in favor of this thought process is the upliftment of the specialty. There occurred a tremendous up-gradation of the fraternity of microbiology in terms of learning, up gradation of skills, infrastructure, networking, opportunities for inter disciplinary collaboration & research opportunities. Over the past century, humanity has witnessed the emergence of numerous

Why COVID-19 is a bane for microbiologists, the flip side of the story

The vast specialty of medical microbiology is reduced to just ‘covidology’ in the last one year period. The staff, students & researchers of microbiology specialty are working major hours in COVID-19 diagnosis leaving their usual activities.

The concentric attention on COVID-19 has swept away all other major national control programs against infections which had gained momentum in the past few years. The long term impact of this neglect on major infectious diseases like TB including drug

Conclusions

To conclude, COVID-19 is neither a boon nor a bane to the medical microbiologists. A balanced approach to the current problem in hand without ignoring all other pre-existing challenges is the need of the hour. No investment in time, infrastructure or knowledge will go waste. Whatever we have learnt during the pandemic should help us perform better in future to make the world a better place to live. And many collateral effects which we have faced during COVID-19 may be mitigated by a responsible

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Vasanthapuram Ravi: Acquisition of data, analysis & interpretation of data, review & editing, final approval of the version. Arunaloke Chakrabarti: Acquisition of data, analysis & interpretation of data, review & editing, final approval of the version. Chand Wattal: Conception and design of the study, Supervision, Revising the article critically for important intellectual content, Review & editing, final approval of the version. Reena Raveendran: Acquisition of data, analysis & interpretation

Source of support & conflict of interest

None.

Disclaimer

The data presented here is an authentic reproduction of presentations received for E-Microcon. While every effort has been made to assure the information provided here is complete and accurate; the editors/IJMM cannot assume any responsibility for omissions, errors, misprinting, or ambiguity contained within this publication.

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