After many delays, India is finally expanding its Covid-19-testing efforts. Testing has several objectives. Identifying those who are currently infected — by testing suspected patients, travellers, their primary contacts and frontline health and police personnel — can help treat them better, or prevent them from infecting others.

Knowing the fraction of the population that is infected will help the government determine the success of the lockdown, and when it can relax social distancing measures. Governments are also trying to use tests to identify citizens who have recovered from the virus and certify them as being safe to return to work.

The idea is that recovered individuals have immunity, and do not risk getting infected or infecting anyone else, and could be exempt from lockdown.

Read more at The Economic Times