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

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.