Is Telangana paying no heed to ICMR directive on Covid testing?

Hyderabad: Is the State government least bothered about the new directive of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Covid-19 testing where it has suggested the States to conduct the RT-PCR tests for those who have been found negative in the Rapid Antigen Tets (RAT)?

It may be mentioned here that the State government, in its latest report as of May 19, has claimed to have conducted tests for about 1.42 crore people out of about 4.5 crore population in the State.

On May 19 alone, it had conducted 71,070 tests, which is far higher than the World Health Organisation (WHO) benchmark rate of 140 per million per day, which comes to about 5,600 tests per day. And, it is also on the higher side of the benchmark as the samples tested per million population in Telangana stood at 3,83,315.

Further, following the existing protocol, it is conducting tests for the primary and secondary contacts. Of the total tests conducted on May 19, 53,787 tests have been conducted at the government testing labs and 17,283 in the private labs.

It is the same daily trend that more than 50 to 65 per cent of the tests are being conducted in the government-run testing centres, say the officials. Reason for the high testing rates at the government-run centres is that there are 1,064 government-run and 63 private test labs located across the State.

"Most of the private labs are located in Hyderabad. Similarly, the number of government testing centres located in Hyderabad, Ranga Reddy and Medchal-Malkajgiri are more," said an official.

The latest ICMR guidelines say all symptomatic individuals who test negative by RAT should get themselves immediately tested by RT-PCR. It reasoned, "This is especially important as the RATs are likely to miss a few positive cases presenting with a low viral load".

Further, it asked all RAT negative symptomatic individuals may be treated as suspect Covid-19 cases and are advised to follow the home isolation protocol while awaiting the RT-PCR test result.

The State government data claims that the majority of people tested in 1,064 government-run test centres have undergone RAT because the majority of the testing centres have been designated to conduct the RAT tests.

Of the 21 government-run centres, seven centres have the facility to conduct Cartridge Based Nucleic Acid Amplification Tests (CBNAAT) and the remaining have been designated Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) test centres.

Similarly, of the 63 private testing labs, 58 have facilities of RT-PCR, three centres have CAB NAAT, one centre has both the RT-PCR and CB NAAT and one private centre has the TureNAT (a portable version of CB NAAT) facilities.

Against the backdrop of the latest ICMR guidelines, questions are raised as to how many of the total tested have been found symptomatic in the RAT tests? At a time when the State government gearing up to vaccinate tens and thousands of people, will it have to re-conduct RT-PCR tests for all those symptomatic tested negative in RAT?