Why India needs random Covid tests

Covid-testing strategies have been focused on individuals with “high-probability” of infections and, obviously, only such high probability cases have been identified so far. There is little chance of identifying somebody who is not “high-risk” with this targeted strategy.

Yet, all the data we have thus far garnered about the pandemic indicates that it throws up massive numbers of asymptomatic cases. These cases will not be picked up in India without random sampling across the general population. Given there are over 23,000 known positive cases already, community transmission has surely happened. But we have no idea of the true infection rate.

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