Why Pakistan’s Indigenous Testing is not Materialising?

Novel Coronavirus Disease caused a national emergency for many countries. It has resulted in overburdening the healthcare sector, increased the vulnerability of the poor, and incurred heavy losses to the economy. Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) through its COVID Response Team is trying to analyse the situation and provide necessary policy input. At the time of writing i.e. April 2, the total number of positive tests are 2,291 out of the total 16,777 tests performed in the countryi. That means 13% of the total tests are positive. Out of a total population of 216,565,318, it means every 12,908th person was getting the test. This is extremely low. Studiesii,iii show that COVID-19 has a reproduction factor of 2-5 that means a single person can infect from 2 to 5 people. This means that there can be 4,582 patients of Coronavirus out there. This calculation is very crude and real calculation is much scarier but let us not get into that discussion for now.