An Approach to Screen COVID-19 Patients: With Special Reference to Pakistan

Abstract

The World Health Organisation declared Covid-19 as a pandemic on 11th March 2020. The main approach to tackle Covid-19 worldwide is to screen and provide supportive care to patients. For screening purpose RT-qPCR based test are used as an initial detections assay. The test is expensive, time consuming and not suitable for mass scale screening/ confirmation requirement. A recent advancement is development of Immunoassay procedures (liquid Phase tests or bed side 10-20minute strip test). In order to help and accelerate bringing life to normal after lock down, Pakistan is in dire need to develop and adopt the immunoassay procedures for mass scale screening and confirmation of COVID-19 infection. It is cheap and easy to perform without a lab requirement.