Winter is coming: What’s next in COVID-19 testing

The upcoming flu season in the Northern Hemisphere is expected to increase demand for COVID-19 testing. Decision makers may ask: Will there be enough flexible testing capacity to respond to global demand and avoid second lockdowns?

 
Sufficient testing capacity is widely recognized as critical to managing COVID-19 and minimizing further outbreaks, as noted by the World Health Organization. Testing enables the quick identification, management, and isolation of COVID-19 patients. As a result, many countries have prioritized COVID-19 testing in the last six months and have increased it by orders of magnitude.

Yet stakeholders around the globe are now preparing for an even larger challenge. With the onset of the winter and accompanying 2020–21 flu season, the demand for COVID-19 testing might increase threefold over the testing that has been performed in the summer months of 2020 (Exhibit 1), whether we see a second wave of virus infection or not.

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Πηγή: mckinsey