Essay on Why is Testing Important in Battling COVID-19?

The Director-General of World Health Organisation, Dr Tedros Adhanom said: “For all countries, we have a simple message. Test.”

As global cases continue to increase, he emphasised the need of escalating contact tracing, isolation, and testing efforts as they are backbone and foundation of the response. He also suggested that every suspected case should be tested. If they are tested positive, they should be isolated and it should be determined who they have been associated with two days just before they developed the symptoms of COVID-19. In addition, people close to the patient should also be tested.

Now, the question arises: Why is testing important in battling COVID-19?

Actually, timely and efficient virus testing are an integral prerequisite for the treatment, diagnosis, isolation, reporting, and identification of virus. Testing seems to cast a direct effect on the effectiveness of controlling and preventing epidemic. This is the main reason why WHO has been emphasising on conducting tests.

First of all, testing helps in identifying infection sources and it facilitates targeted and overall planning of epidemic control and prevention. While testing is considered one of the main means, the identification of sources of infection is actually the basis and precondition of control and prevention of infectious disease. For the identification of confirmed cases, potential infectors were tested by China.

On this basis, a series of measures were adopted by China including testing and quarantining close contacts, tracing every close contact, and performing targeted epidemiological investigation. These have served to effectively prevent future spread of the infection, which has now become a pandemic.

Secondly, testing helps with the timely and efficient diagnosis of COVID-19. It also facilitates the treatment for raising cure rate and decreasing the rate of fatality. In fact, it can be said that virus test is a critical diagnostic criterion for pandemic. In general, timely tests of the virus decrease the time of diagnosis while guaranteeing early treatment and diagnosis. Thus, it becomes the key measure for decreasing the rate of fatality and increasing the cure rate. In accordance with the statistics provided by the NHC or National Health Commission, the rate of severe cases dropped in China when the nation began to perform quick tests. It is through early treatment and diagnosis with consistent observation that the nation was able to control the spread of virus.

Thirdly, testing helps in categorising patients while facilitating the diagnosis and treatment of other diseases as well. It has become common knowledge that the initial symptoms of the virus are similar to the symptoms of many other diseases like influenza. This leads to confusion and misjudgement. Actually, through screening and testing, it is possible to screen patients with other diseases so that they can receive effective and targeted treatment.

It has been shown by practice that low-cost and rapid testing trough different ways have helped greatly in the prevention and control of pandemic in China. It would not be wrong to say that COVID-19 is a deadly disease and early testing enables the reduction of its transmission. China, through a number of ways, has improved its efficiency and capacity in testing coronavirus. For instance, it is possible for Hubei province to test up to approximately ten thousand people on the daily basis under full capacity. The NCT or nucleic acid test results can be acquired within only two hours. While at the same time, measures have been taken for guaranteeing low-cost access to all the tests for potential infectors. In spite of the lack of unified and clear standard of testing feeds, all municipalities and provinces in China have integrated testing costs in support and reimbursement of medical insurance.

Other than just testing, the identification and isolation of people with virus also help in avoiding an increase in new patients. Actually, decreasing the rate of new infections help in decreasing the peak of disease, which can serve to lower the net number of cases. Effective quarantine and testing measures help in easing the pressure on medical and health services. This helps in ensuring that the health system is not being overwhelmed by the influx of patients.

Even though no individual nation was singled out for discussion and criticism by the Director-General of WHO, some governments have been quite slow in responding to the outbreak of coronavirus than other nations.

Aggressive social distancing and testing measures in nations such as South Korea, where over 220,000 tests were performed, served to determine and pinpoint over 8,200 people with the pandemic. It also enabled the nation to slow the transmission of infection. 75 fatalities have been recorded by the nation, which is a much lower rate of mortality than several other hotspots of COVID-19.

In comparison to it, the absence and unavailability of a federal response in the United States could mean numerous cases could remain unidentified. Local and state leaders have seemingly criticised delays in making tests prevalent among public at the start of the outbreak. Meanwhile, the Centres of Disease Prevention and Control limited testing to Chinese visitors. Ever since then, private labs have been given the permission by federal regulators to perform tests.

The Director-General again noted: “For every nation, an important thing is political commitment. Nations should be capable of testing all the probable cases. It is not possible to fight this pandemic with a blindfold on. It is critical for them to know and identify where the cases exist.”

As an individual person, what can you do?

Actually, you just need to make sure that you are taking the important precautions. For instance, you need to stay away from others and isolate even when you do not have the virus. This is just to ensure protection and prevention of virus. In addition to it, it is important to note that the primary symptoms of COVID-19 are the same as many other common diseases. You need to undergo a test if you have been experiencing the primary symptoms and they have not been leaving you for a while.