Chennai: Sowmya Swaminathan, chief scientist, World Health Organisation, has said, “we live in unusual times due to the pandemic, which has brought to the forefront now more than ever the need to live cohesively with the environment.”
Speaking at a recent award function in Chennai, she said, “the impact of huge climatic variations will be felt even more strongly in the future if we don’t reassess the choices we make.”
Sowmya recently said India’s testing rate was low when compared to some of the countries such as Germany, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan that are successfully trying to curb the coronavirus. She added that without adequate testing, fighting the virus is like “fighting fire blindfolded.”
In an interactive session through video conference, Sowmya Swaminathan said, “India as a whole, the testing rates are much lower compared to some of the countries, who have done well like Germany, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan.”
“Even the United States is testing a huge number of people. So we need to have some benchmark and every public health department needs to have benchmarks on what is the rate of testing per lakh or per million, what is the test positivity rate,” she added.