My current thinking on testing for #COVIDー19 in resource-poor settings.

If you identify as many infected cases as possible, you can enforce their isolation and everyone else can go about their business, practicing social distancing.

This is cheaper overall.

The true cost of a test includes the cost of testing and the savings from the decisions you can make with the test.

Also, if you know practically everyone with the infection, you obtain a truer case fatality rate, as opposed to a case fatality rate among a super-selected few with severe disease.

This is not a call for mass testing everyone. It is a call to stay the course. Scale up access to testing, and not limit testing to inpatient cases as we’ve seen in parts of the world.

Inpatient testing has lower direct costs but the savings from inpatient testing are limited to protecting hospital workers. Especially given that we don’t have pharmacological treatment. Protecting hospital workers is very important but we should do more than just that.

Adding this to the thread: At some point, we will need to figure out how to safely leave lockdown. https://twitter.com/Naresh_hanchate/status/1244490560443789312?s=20