New Delhi: Underlining the importance of adequate testing for COVID-19, World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan on Tuesday said that India’s testing rate is low, compared to other countries which have done well in combating the pandemic.
“India, as a whole, has a low testing rate compared to some of the countries which have done well like Germany, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and even the US,” she said while speaking on ‘The vaccine race, balancing since and urgency’ organised by the Telangana government.
She said while participating via video-conferencing, that every public health department needs to have benchmarks like what is the test rate per million and what is the test positivity rate. “The moment your test positivity rate is above 5 per cent, you know that you are not testing adequately,” she said.
