This is why we should test everyone for COVID-19

Author: Reda Cherif, Senior Economist, IMF & Fuad Hasanov, Senior Economist, IMF

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• The potential benefits of a universal testing programme far outweigh any downsides.
• The barriers – such as a lack of expert consensus and the costs involved – can all be overcome.
• By deploying universal testing, we can avoid a third wave and the devastating consequences that would result.

Many experts have recognized the merits of universal testing for COVID-19, arguing that the benefits outweigh the costs by a huge margin. To cite a few, Paul Romer, a Nobel laureate in economics, Michael Mina, an epidemiologist from Harvard University, the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, our own IMF working paper, and many commentators have argued for a universal testing and isolation policy (TIP) to vanquish the pandemic and reopen economies safely.

It has been shown unambiguously that continuous testing of the population at a relatively high rate – between 10-20% of the population each day – would squash the spread of the virus and prevent any resurgence. A TIP against COVID-19 would help identify infection clusters early and deal with them in a targeted and inexpensive way. This approach would preclude imposing numerous restrictions on economic and social activities, which are extremely costly.

Universal testing would cost about 3% (at $5 per test and 15% population testing rate) of the $3 trillion fiscal support provided by the US in 2020 and less than 1% of the economic and social losses ($16 trillion) incurred during the pandemic. In other words, it would still be worth implementing universal testing even if the chance of success were less than 1%.

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