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COVID-19: A smart testing strategy is a smart economic investment
By Dr Daya Krishan Mangal and Sharang Shah
The last twelve months have been tumultuous. From detection of the first case of COVID-19 in Wuhan city, China to its spread like wildfire; the disease has impacted almost every country in the world. The rapid spread of COVID-19 is a result of an increasingly globalized world and lack of knowledge of the epidemiology of this novel virus.
In just one year, there have been 93.53 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, and over 2 million people have succumbed to the virus (as of January 15, 2021). The human cost of the pandemic has been devastating; it, however, pales in comparison to the economic cost. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has conservatively estimated that the global economic cost of the pandemic will be around $28 trillion – a per capita productivity loss of over $4,000 per person, higher than the median annual income for a majority of the countries in the wo