Virus-Test Divide Exposes Government Successes—and Failures
- Huge variation in testing regimes from U.S. to Singapore
- Cost, health system and past experience all determine practice
A health worker wearing a protective suit waits at a drive-through testing center for the Covid-19 coronavirus in Seoul, on March 7.
Photographer: Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images
One barometer of competence for the world’s governments and health-care systems as they battle the coronavirus pandemic lies in the testing itself.
How nations handle the most basic aspect of disease detection may be as important for the trust in governments, and even the survival of some administrations, as it is for the wellbeing of the populations they serve.
In the U.S., a top medical official acknowledged on Thursday that the slow roll-out of tests to track down early carriers, and so contain the spread of Covid-19 across a nation of 330 million, was a “failing” for a medical system that’s poorly designed for the task.