‘Don’t lump all testing categories together’

With worries of COVID-19 infection numbers on the rise, many health experts were concerned whether Sri Lanka is performing adequate testing to pick up those with this infection.

“In pandemic times, we should be conducting four types of testing – random sampling from the community; testing of patients who come to hospitals with influenza-like symptoms; testing of people who have got exposed to the virus; and testing of people who have developed symptoms and are worried they may be having COVID-19,” said a doctor.

The issue is whether we are testing these categories and why we are not having these specific categories separately, without lumping everything together, he said.

He pointed out that when all figures are put together, the danger is that there is no way of knowing the trends, whether infections are going up or down. “We will not know the real situation. We are trying to forecast what will happen but the trend is not known on a scientific basis,” he added.