Centre urges states to ramp up Covid-19 testing for early detection and containment of pandemic

The Centre on Wednesday urged the states and UTs to ramp up the testing of coronavirus COVID-19 for early detection and containment of the pandemic. With the aim to remove all impediments in testing, Health Secretary Preeti Sudan and ICMR DG Dr Balram Bhargava asked to take immediate steps to facilitate and ramp up testing. They have reiterated that ‘test-track-treat’ is the key strategy for containment of the pandemic.

New Delhi: Reiterating that ‘test-track-treat’ is the key strategy for early detection and containment of Covid-19 the pandemic, the central government on Wednesday appealed states and UTs to take immediate steps to facilitate and ramp up testing.

Pointing out that in some states and UTs, the capacity utilization of the testing labs, particularly the ones in the private sector, is grossly sub-optimal, Union Health Secretary Preeti Sudan and Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) DG Dr Balram Bhargava have advised them to take all possible steps to ensure full capacity utilization of all COVID-19 testing laboratories.

“All the States and UTs have been advised to facilitate testing at the earliest by enabling all qualified medical practitioners, including private practitioners, to prescribe COVID tests to any individual fulfilling the criteria for testing as per ICMR guidelines,” sources said.

ICMR has strongly recommended that laboratories should be free to test any individual in accordance to the ICMR guidelines and state authorities must not restrict an individual from getting tested, as early testing will help in containing the virus and saving lives.

While RT-PCR is the gold standard for diagnosis of COVlD-19, ICMR has recently approved the use of a point-of-care Rapid Antigen Test for early detection of COVID-19. The test is quick, simple, safe and can be used as a point-of-care test in containment zones as well as hospitals, as per criteria specified by ICMR for testing.

In order to facilitate testing, States and UTs have also been advised to make efforts in 'campaign mode' by setting up camps using mobile vans in high incidence areas to collect samples of all symptomatic individuals as well as their contacts and get those samples tested by using rapid antigen tests.

The positive individuals should be treated according to the treatment protocol and the negative ones should be tested for RT-PCR. Also, the rate for RT-PCR tests by private labs should be finalized by the States and UTs.

States have been further advised to make it mandatory for all labs to upload the testing data on the ICMR database as well as report to the state, district, city authorities for surveillance and contact tracing.

In addition to ramping up and facilitating testing, States and UTs have also been urged to pay attention to 'contact tracing' as it holds the key to containing the virus.