1/ This is a good step but social distancing by itself is not enough. Social distancing is intended to #FlattenTheCurve It has to be backed up by testing, tracing, treating. Social distancing comes at a cost to economy, mental health, personal freedoms.
2/ We need to rapidly scale up testing and treatment to justify the high cost of social distancing. Social distancing is temporary, not permanent. We can’t waste this precious time doing a few hundred tests per day. Testing and treating 100 is different from 10000.
3/ The virus is always a step ahead, it moves fast and aggressively! Always assume we are several steps behind. Scale up testing to 10,000+. Involve private sector. You can’t wait for cases to explode to start testing!
4/ Red star marks where SK started scaling testing, at 204 cases. Helped to #FlattenTheCurve. Yellow star marks where Italy scaled testing. They did not #FlattenTheCurve. Now they are in lock down. Still adding ~3000 cases per day! Healthcare system collapsing under the load. 
5/ If we test 10,000+ daily and succeed it saving lives we will celebrate it! That’s the best possible scenario. The pandemic is under no obligation to grow as slowly as testing scales.
6/ Look at the difference in the rate of growth of cases in Italy vs South Korea. SK cases started increasing earlier, but they scaled up testing, helped #FlattenTheCurve. Italy acted late, and now it’s too late. Please don’t let India go like Italy. Test more!
Graphic @elaval
Graphic @elaval
7/ “The proportion of pre-symptomatic transmission was 48% (95%CI 32-67%) for Singapore and 62% (95%CI 50-76%) for Tianjin, China.” medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
8/ Presymptomatic transmission is likely a big driver of infection, that’s why we can’t just focus on testing symptomatic patients or those with travel history! Please expand testing. Isn’t the evidence obvious?
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