Data: COVID-19 Testing in India & other Countries
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
May 5, 2020
There has been criticism from multiple quarters about the low COVID-19 testing rates in India. In the past few weeks, a significant improvement in the testing rate is achieved. How does this compare with other countries? Here is an analysis.
A tweet from the BJP’s official Twitter handle ( @BJP4India), on 16 April  2020, states that the scale of COVID-19 testing being conducted in India at the benchmark of 5 thousand cases and 10 thousand cases is among the largest in the world, higher than that of UK, USA & Italy.
India has tested 2,74,599 samples till 9 pm on 15 April.
At the benchmarks of 5,000 and 10,000 cases, the number of tests were 114,015 and 217,554 respectively.
This scale of testing at these stages is one of the largest, way more than tests conducted in US, UK and Italy. pic.twitter.com/LG01VFr7JU
The infographic provided in the tweet contains the details of the number of tests conducted by India on the day the total number of COVID-19 positive cases crossed 5000 and 10000 mark respectively.  Data pertaining to, USA, UK, Italy and Canada are also provided in the infographic for comparison.
As per this information, India has conducted around 1.14 lakh tests by the time 5000 Covid-19 cases were identified. In comparison, the USA, UK and Italy conducted fewer tests when the first 5000 cases were reported. Meanwhile, Canada has conducted more than 2.41 lakh tests when 5000 cases were reported.
It took around 2.17 lakh tests for India to identify 10 thousand cases, while the numbers for the USA, UK and Italy were significantly less as per the infographic shared by the BJP.
Asit appears, the intent of the is to justify and rebut the allegation that Indiais not testing enough and hence the number of positive cases reported are fewerthan other countries.
Inthis story, we take a look at this claim and compare the data with testingnumbers of some other countries.  Aconsolidated official source for COVID-19 numbers for all the countries is notavailable. However, information from various countries has been aggregated atwebsites like  Ourworldindata.org,who collate the information from various official sources.
Thedata from this source does tally with the numbers mentioned in the infographictweeted by the BJP. The numbers also match with the official government sourcesof the respective countries mentioned in the tweet.
Tests
conducted by India among the highest at the 40 thousand cases mark
India has recently crossed 40 thousand COVID-19 positive cases. As per the available data, India conducted nearly 10.5 lakh tests to reach this number.  Testing information is not available for a few of the countries with a high number of cases like – Spain, Russia, Brazil, Iran etc.  to compare the data.
Amongthe countries for which the testing information is available, India hasconducted the highest number of tests to identify 40 thousand cases. It isfollowed by Germany, which has conducted around 9.6 lakh tests on the day itsnumber of positive cases have crossed 40 thousand. Canada, USA and Peru areamong the countries which conducted a greater number of tests to identify itsfirst 40 thousand cases.
Meanwhile,France, U.K, Italy & Belgium have conducted the least number of tests toidentify 40 thousand cases. Among these countries, Germany has conducted moretests to identify its first 20 thousand cases, followed by India.
South
Korea and Canada have conducted more tests than India to detect 5 thousand and
10 thousand cases
Fewcountries have fared well in controlling the spread of COVID-19. South Korea,New Zealand, Canada, Israel etc. are few such examples.  One of the main reasons cited for this is theaggressive testing carried out by them.
Sincemost of these countries have just over 10 thousand positive cases so far, wehave considered 5 thousand and 10 thousand cases as the benchmarks to comparethe number of tests conducted.
India has conducted a greater number of tests to identify its first 5 thousand and 10 thousand cases than most of these countries as well. However, South Korea and Canada have conducted a greater number of tests compared to India. Canada required around 2.41 lakh tests to detect 5 thousand cases i.e. more than double the number of tests conducted by India at that benchmark.
Meanwhile,when it comes to tests conducted to identify 10 thousand cases, South Korea isahead of the others by a significant margin with 4.43 lakh tests, compared to2.17 lakh tests in India. New Zealand is another country which did proactivetesting, that has limited the total number of cases as on 03 May to around1,100 cases for which 1.5 lakh tests were done.
India
slightly better than other countries in terms of tests per confirmed case
Sincethe total number of positive cases in a country can be dependent on thepopulation, the number of tests conducted for a specific benchmark of positivecases may not be the right basis of comparison between the countries.
Furthermore, each of the countries is at a different stage of the outbreak. For example, the number in the USA is upwards of 11 lakh cases, whereas Italy & Spain have more than 2 lakh cases. Hence it would not be prudent to compare their historical data with India which has just crossed 40 thousand cases. Hence, the number of tests per confirmed case could be a better yardstick for comparison.
Asper the current available numbers, India has one positive case per every 26tests conducted.
Vietnam has the highest number of tests per positive case with 966. This is exponentially higher than any of the other countries.  Taiwan and New Zealand which have conducted proactive testing are among the countries with a greater number of tests per positive case detected with 149 and 132 tests respectively.
South Korea which also followed a very planned approach to the testing has detected a positive case per every 59 tests. Italy detected a positive case for every 10 tests, while the USA & UK have positive cases for every 6.2 and 4.7 tests respectively.
India
still lags behind in terms of tests conducted per million
Overthe past few weeks, India has significantly ramped up the number of tests beingconducted to detect COVID-19. As per the information provided by MOHFW, around11 lakh samples were tested as on 04 May 2020. This is a significant increasecompared to around 69 thousand tests conducted as on 04 April 2020. Further, morethan 60 thousand tests were conducted in a day on 03 May 2020.
However,because of the huge population, the testing rates in the country are still onthe lower end.  In an
earlier story, we have highlighted the lower number of tests inIndia compared to other countries. In spite of the significant increase in thenumber of tests, India is among the countries with the least tests per millionpopulation.
As of date, India conducts around 800 tests per million population. In comparison, UK conducts around 17,700 tests per million, while Italy conducts more than 35 thousand tests per million population. Meanwhile, USA which is one of the countries mentioned in BJP’s tweet conducts more than 21 thousand tests per million.
Testing
strategies vary from country-country, hence comparisons can be misleading
The response of Italy, Spain, U.K and a few other European countries has been slow as they were the first few countries that were hit by the pandemic outside of China. By the time the testing was initiated at a large scale, many people were already infected. This is reflected in the smaller number of tests per positive case i.e. the fewer tests conducted at the point of each benchmark being reached in terms of positive cases.
The USA also has a similar story, with the number of cases exploding and mitigating efforts not even across the country. On the contrary, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, South Korea etc. have been proactive in taking the required measures to contain the spread. Hence the number of tests per COVID-19 positive case detected is higher. Vietnam has also been receiving plaudits in the way it has contained COVID-19.
Tests per million is another yardstick which reveals the intensity of the tests being carried out in a country.  India faces a unique situation because of the size of its population that poses a challenge to conduct extensive testing. In spite of the significant increase in the number of tests per day, the number per million is quite low because of the huge population in the country.  Ramping up the testing infrastructure while the country is in Lockdown mode is being suggested by many.
On the other hand, a smarter approach is being suggested to make optimum utilization of available resources, by limiting testing to the most probable ones. In either case, the need is to develop a testing strategy suited to the country, rather than a uniform approach. Hence such comparison may be misleading.
Featured Image: COVID-19 Testing in India and Other Countries