Rapid assessment of COVID-19 suspected cases: A community based approach for developing countries like Pakistan
For countries like Pakistan, the strategy of Trace, Test and Treat is difficult to adopt due to limited testing capabilities in the context of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Similarly, owing to the poor economic conditions of the country, complete lockdown would lead to an economic crisis especially for small businesses and daily wagers.
In addition to enhancing the country’s testing capabilities by importing test kits, the authors argue for a scorecard based assessment, to reduce the load on the testing centres all across the country. This would be beneficial in small villages and towns to adopt a bottom-up approach and ease the already overstretched testing facilities for management, treatment and care of the suspected COVID-19 patients. The overburdening of the health system can be controlled with systematic filtering of the suspect cases, where the parameters discussed have been given due weightage to assess the total score of the suspect to filter him/her for a probable test case or otherwise.
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