Coronavirus: doctors slam India’s limited testing as fears of community spread grow
- India has recorded 151 cases and three deaths, but restrictions on who is eligible to take the Covid-19 test masks the true scale of the situation, experts say
- The country has conducted about 12,513 tests, accounting for an average of nine tests per million people
The 32-year-old, who made more than a dozen trips to the international airport in February, is worried he could have picked up the Covid-19 infection, but he has no way of confirming it.
The country has recorded 151 cases, three deaths and 13 recoveries as of Wednesday. But experts are concerned these numbers do not give a true picture of the situation, as the number of tests conducted in India is worryingly low compared with that of other nations.
Right now, we have no evidence of community transmission because we have not tested enough.
Public health experts have urged the government to rapidly boost the number of tests so as to accurately assess the situation and catch people at the stage of community transmission – a pre-epidemic stage where an individual with no known travel to affected countries or direct contact with another patient is infected.
