prasad1
Active member
The national lockdown is necessary, but it is not a cure.
Managing the coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19) still needs a widespread testing, identification, tracing and isolation strategy. India must initiate widespread testing, issue screening and confirmatory test protocols, evolve a randomisation process for surveillance testing, and identify high-risk locations. Only this can control the spread of the virus, or it will re-emerge once the lockdown is lifted.
Testing is not expensive and it can be done at a massive scale. The lockdown is the opportunity cost of not testing early — a loss of about Rs 10,000 crore a day in taxes in addition to spending on mitigating the effect on hapless individuals. The opportunity cost in lost taxes of a seven-day lockdown could pay for screen testing our whole urban population — and we are locked down for 21 days. So far, we have tested barely 25,000 people. We need to do much more.
www.hindustantimes.com
Managing the coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19) still needs a widespread testing, identification, tracing and isolation strategy. India must initiate widespread testing, issue screening and confirmatory test protocols, evolve a randomisation process for surveillance testing, and identify high-risk locations. Only this can control the spread of the virus, or it will re-emerge once the lockdown is lifted.
Testing is not expensive and it can be done at a massive scale. The lockdown is the opportunity cost of not testing early — a loss of about Rs 10,000 crore a day in taxes in addition to spending on mitigating the effect on hapless individuals. The opportunity cost in lost taxes of a seven-day lockdown could pay for screen testing our whole urban population — and we are locked down for 21 days. So far, we have tested barely 25,000 people. We need to do much more.
Locking down is not enough. Ramp up testing
Use this period to build capacity, have randomised testing for different groups and identify high-risk locations
