NEW DELHI: The weekly growth rate of coronavirus testing during the second wave of pandemic reveals how grossly underprepared were the states to handle the crisis.
The unprecedented growth rate of cases dwarfed any attempt by states to increase their testing capacity and check the transmission of the virus.
States across India fumbled as the second wave gripped the country.
Though the number of tests conducted per day was increasing, there was a wide gap between growth rate of cases and growth rate of testing.
Why measure growth rateTesting, as we all know, provides a window into the pandemic.
Without testing, it is impossible to get a clear picture of the extent of the transmission on the ground.
For a rapidly spreading virus such as Covid-19, speed is the essence.
Ideally, testing should be one-step ahead of transmission so that infected people can be traced, quarantined and the chain of transmission broken.
Hence, the weekly growth rate of testing and not just the daily increase in the number of tests conducted becomes a more credible unit to measure the pandemic.
The plot of the weekly growth rate of testing against the weekly growth rate of rise in the number of cases revealed that though testing capacities were being increased on almost daily basis, the rate of this increase was not substantial.
States either didn’t have the required resources to expand or failed to take necessary action to check the spread of the virus.
States that didn’t actThere were several states that — either due to paucity of resources or lack of initiative — didn’t increase the pace of testing when hit by the second wave.
“When the second wave started, we should have had excess capacity to test much more, and using test positivity increased testing, anticipated and made policy changes.
But either we didn’t have the capacity or were not doing much contact tracing and testing of household contacts,” says Vincent Rajkumar, professor of medicines at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, United States.
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