Ameera Shah, managing director of India’s Metropolis Healthcare, returned to her Mumbai home in mid-March, after giving birth to her first child. Her plan was to spend a month “without worrying about Metropolis,” the nationwide chain of diagnostics laboratories she had built over the previous two decades.
But coronavirus cases had begun emerging in India, where authorities had done little to prepare for the pandemic. Ms Shah was soon ensnared in calls with government officials about testing policies.
On March 23, New Delhi permitted six private pathology labs — including Metropolis — to start testing for the pathogen. A day later, Prime Minister Narendra Modi abruptly imposed a nationwide coronavirus lockdown. The 40-year-old entrepreneur — who by then had retreated with her husband, parents and baby to a house in the countryside — found herself at the centre of a maelstrom, trying to help her company ramp up its coronavirus testing capacity amid the severe disruption of the lockdown.