Testing 10 lakh people each day will cost approx.100-120 crore rupees. Each day of even a partial lockdown costs India >20000 crore. Testing a million people will be 10 times our current testing.Even if we tested at that rate for 90 days cost is less than one days loss #covid 1/n
It is a no brainer that this should be the way to go. The faster we can reopen the economy the better.That cannot be done SAFELY without knowing the rate of spread of the infection.Easing lockdown blind which is what seems to be happening is NOT an option with the rapid rise 2/n
in cases that we are seeing. I'm not saying a million tests a day is the number needed. But we need to scale up significantly in hot spot areas. The 10-12k crore that we may spend over the next 90-120 days may help save the economy from a much bigger calamity 3/n
Epidemiologists say the same thing.They may argue about how much testing is needed but all agree we aren't testing enough.On 5th May we had tested 11.91 lakh samples On 22nd May that has only reached 27.19 lakh tests. An inc of <230%. This includes repeat tests on same person 4/n
On 5th May we had 49405 cases. As of 22nd May that number was 124793. Thats an increase of 250% The % increase in number of cases is higher than the % increase in testing. The only way to get ahead of the virus is by using the TTI mantra, Test,Trace and Isolate. 5/n
And if we don't test enough we can't do the tracing and isolation. Why this is not apparent to the Govt and decision makers is the question. Currrent R_t which had dropped to 1.05 in first wk of May is up again to 1.15 now. So easing lockdown is starting to show a spike. 6/6
