The need is urgent

Friday, 21 May 2021 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

In the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, it became obvious that the ability to test whether or not a person has contracted the disease would be crucial to our ability to beat the pandemic.

Just one year ago, barely anyone had ever heard of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a common technology used to accurately detect the presence of COVID-19 from just a swab of saliva.

As countries went into to lockdown and began to use this technology to test thousands to millions of people per day, scientists quickly put forth guidelines for what to expect from testing.

The WHO suggested that if more than 5% of people being tested were found to have COVID-19, either testing should be radically increased, or urgent movement restrictions must be put in place in order to contain the spread of the virus.

As the theory goes, if more than 5% of tests are coming back positive, it means you are not testing enough people, and many sick people are going untested, remaining undetected in the community and infecting others.

Despite the world having learned this lesson one year ago, and our medical and research communities pleading for a rapid ramp up to our national testing capacity, these pleas to our generals have fallen on deaf ears.

The terrifying truth is that in Sri Lanka, the 5% red line drawn by the WHO is well in the rearview mirror. Yesterday it was reported that out of 25,713 tests conducted, 3,623 tested positive. That is a 14% positive test rate, nearly three times higher than the threshold deemed to be a red line by international health authorities worldwide.

Yet, as resistant as the Government has been to imposing movement restrictions, it has been even more vigorously opposed to increasing our national testing capacity.

Over a year into this pandemic, with over 1,000 officially declared deaths, and a positive test rate nearly three times over the internationally agreed alarm bell threshold, there is simply no excuse for the Government to continue insisting on completely controlling and micromanaging the nation’s PCR testing capacity.

Every country that has successfully contained COVID-19 has built up a significant private sector testing capacity and drove their positive test rate down to well under 1%. The economic incentives for the private sector are immense. If large employers are permitted to build the capacity to regularly test their workers, factories can safely keep humming, essential offices can remain open, essential services can continue, and the economy is less likely to ground to a halt or stop and start in spurts every time a new ‘cluster’ emerges.

The need is urgent. COVID-19 Disease Control Minister Dr. Sudarshini Fernandopulle warns that the number of undetected COVID-19 patients in the community must be up to two or three times the number who test positive daily. This is a recipe for catastrophe. The only sustainable solution is to radically ramp up our testing capacity to over 300,000 per day by unleashing the private sector, putting our doctors and scientists back in charge, and heeding their advice over narrow short-term political considerations or instincts of centralised control.