Addressing global pandemic (COVID 19) – How much testing needed to control the disease effectively

• Published in: Journal of physics. Conference series 2021-02, Vol.1797 (1), p.12001
• Main Authors: Mazumder, Neelanjan, Dutta, Trina, Dutta, Palash, Srimani, Sneha
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antidotes; Containment; Disease control; Physics; Population density; Viruses
• ISSN: 1742-6588; 1742-6596
• DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/1797/1/012001

Corona virus has so far infected more than 21 million people worldwide with a mortality rate of nearly 3-4%. In some countries, it given goes up as 10%. While lockdown has so far been the only practised measure to hold the spread of the virus, still rate of infection is steadily increasing. Vaccine and effective antidotes are still to come. In this scenario, effective testing only works as an eye opener and helps in strategizing further measures. However, the testing is still a concern especially in developing economies. How much testing required, what are the effective ways to test people and its associated cost are critical considerations for the authorities. In this paper, we are going to analyse trend of positive cases detected in various countries, requirement of testing based on population density and how effective this had been in adapting containment measures. Based on reach and cost constraints, testing at a mass level is exceedingly difficult. So, testing must happen among the most representative sample of the population and the amount of testing in a representative population has a significant role in extrapolating data well on the entire population. So, we will look at what is the optimum amount of testing required per million population by various countries (which would depend on the population and population density). However, this would still not address the exact requirement of optimum sampling frame as data to do that is not available.