Making sense of the Global Coronavirus Data: The role of testing rates in understanding the pandemic and our exit strategy

Rahul Potluri; Deepthi Lavu

The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.06.20054239 doi: medRxiv preprint infection? If only those with symptoms are tested then individuals are more likely to test positive for COVID-19 leading to a low test per positive number. If these countries test the sickest of patients as you would expect in countries with the largest populations and limited testing kits to do, then high testing rates per positive case is even more remarkable as it may suggest lower virus rates compared to other countries but this cannot be concluded from this study. Furthermore, the reliability of local testing kits is an important factor as there are a number of reports of COVID-19 patients testing negative numerous times before a positive test 11 . South Korea can be considered as an exception to this because following an explosion of cases initially, they embarked on an extensive testing policy along with isolation policies combined with the utility of mobile tech and applications to inform the public about real time locations of positive cases. As such, it is widely accepted that South Korea are further along the pandemic curve and the rates of new cases and deaths have significantly reduced [22] [23] [24] .