A TIP Against the COVID-19 Pandemic

Download or read book A TIP Against the COVID-19 Pandemic written by Reda Cherif and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2020-07-03 with total page 47 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A universal testing and isolation policy is the most viable way to vanquish a pandemic. Its implementation requires: (i) an epidemiological rather than clinical approach to testing, sacrificing accuracy for scalability, convenience and speed; and (ii) state intervention to ramp up production, similar to True Industrial Policy (TIP), on a global level to achieve a scale and speed the market alone would fail to provide. We sketch a strategy to tackle market failures and implement smart testing, especially in densely populated areas. The estimated cost of testing is dwarfed by its return, mitigating the economic fallout of the pandemic.