Hyderabad: Noting that lockdown was a temporary measure to contain the spread of coronavirus, a senior official of the World Health Organisation said Tuesday that India has a low testing rate when compared to some of the countries that are successfully trying to curb the disease.
The Chief Scientist of WHO, Soumya Swaminathan, in an interactive session through video conference said, as of now about 28 vaccine candidates for COVID-19 are under clinical trial, of which five are entering Phase-II.
“India as a whole, the testing rates is much lower compared to some of the countries, who have done well in containing the virus like Germany, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. Even the United States is testing a huge number of people. So we need to have some benchmark and every public health department needs to have benchmarks on what is the rate of testing per lakh or per million, what is the test positivity rate,” Swaminathan. “Without adequate number of tests, fighting the virus is like fighting fire blindfolded,” she added.
According to Swaminathan, the number of tests being conducted in India is not adequate if the COVID-19 test positivity rate is above five per cent.
Governments need to constantly monitor the availability of beds, quarantine facilities, ICUs and oxygen supplies in district hospitals.
“So there is a set of eight to 10 indicators that the government needs to keep a close watch on. And you can ramp up or ramp down based on what you are seeing on the ground,” Swaminathan informed.
On the ongoing vaccine trials, she said the WHO has issued guidelines on it and if the efficacy rate of the vaccine is 70 per cent then it is considered to be a good one.