Misstep on testing

Reducing Covid tests will not help

The director of the Indian Council for Medical Research, Balram Bhargava, has recently pointed out lateral flow tests such as rapid antigen tests and home antigen tests have become the mainstay of testing during the Omicron surge. Dr Bhargava has argued there is no shortage of testing kits in the country, given that 15 million a day are produced, including RT-PCR tests. Yet there are questions that can rightly be asked about the prevalence of proper testing, particularly in hotspots like Delhi and Mumbai. After a record number of tests on January 12, the number of tests a day in