COVID-19: Strategies for Allocation of Test Kits

South Korea, a country of 50 million people, has set an example of successfully flattening the curve of new COVID-19 infections by conducting over 400,000 tests [13] (Figure 2). This was achieved by setting up drive-through testing, allowing at least 10,000 people to be tested per day. South Korea's foreign minister Kang Kyung-wha, in an interview with BBC News [2], said that "Testing is central because that leads to early detection, minimizes further spread, and quickly treats those found with the virus". Several countries are suffering from severe community spread because of their delays in testing [12], two of the prime examples being the United States and Italy. In the United States, among a population of 330 million, the number of confirmed cases is more than 230,000 with over 10,000 deaths and these numbers are growing exponentially (Figure 3), whereas in South Korea there are around 9976 confirmed cases and 169 deaths (as of April 2, 2020). Thus, early testing and repeated testing at regular intervals are two of the key strategies to ensure a low fatality rate. However, for countries with a large population (more than 100 million), it is difficult to adopt exhaustive testing schemes because of the limited number of available testing-kits and facilities. Testing a lot of people with mild or no symptoms would occupy the limited testing resources, which could otherwise be used for highrisk patients. However, it is also important to test individuals with mild or no symptoms to detect asymptomatic cases [10] and implement a method that systematically tests individuals for COVID-19.