COVID-19 battle is war, draft final year medicos for the job:

India should take a cue from the UK and Italy and allow final year medical students to skip exam and bring them into the hospital system immediately to fight the war against COVID-19, noted cardiac surgeon Devi Prasad Shetty on Friday said. The Chairman and Founder of the city-based Narayana Health said there should be some reforms in medical education like the UK and Italy.

In the UK, he noted, final year medical students have been told that they dont need to appear for the exam, and they will be given pass based on the past performance and they can get into the hospital system to fill the shortage. Italy got 10,000 more doctors following the move to cut short the duration of MBBS by nine months, according to him.

COVID-19 battle can be only won by young doctors and young nurses. Its like a war, Shetty told PTI. He said: Senior doctorsnone of them will be able to touch the patients because they are past the age of 50. A person who is past the age of 50 is very vulnerable himself.

This is a very contagious disease. "But we dont have that many battalion (of doctors). We need one and half lakh doctors to manage all these government hospitals and private hospitals (to fight COVID-19)", he added.