Who should get tested for coronavirus? ICMR revises guidelines
With positive cases of coronavirus surging in the country, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the apex body dealing with COVID-19, issued new testing guidelines late on Friday night. The idea is to expand the ambit and focus on high-risk individuals. This development came after the World Health Organization (WHO) said more testing is the only way to defeat the deadly virus.
ICMR claimed India is safe from community transmission
So far, ICMR has only concentrated on symptomatic patients, but it also started random testing to judge whether the dreaded community transmission has started. On Wednesday, ICMR claimed India was so far safe from community transmission, as 820 random samples tested negative. However, Ramanan Laxminarayan, Director and Senior Fellow at Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy, said it started 2-3 weeks ago.
We just haven't tested enough people, pointed out Laxminarayan
"India is not an exception to the way the virus behaves. We just haven't tested a representative sample that the country's population of 1.34 billion demands," Laxminarayan had said.
Kin of confirmed cases must be home quarantined
And now, ICMR has undertaken a new approach. The body said all asymptomatic individuals, who have no symptoms but traveled internationally in the last 14 days, should undergo home quarantine for two weeks. They must be tested if they develop symptoms, like fever, cough, and have difficulty in breathing. All family members of confirmed cases must be home quarantined too.
Patients with severe active respiratory illness should be tested
The notification said all patients, hospitalized with severe acute respiratory illness (showing symptoms) and all health workers showing symptoms should be tested. ICMR said all symptomatic contacts of the persons whose lab tests have turned out to be positive have to get tested too. A confirmed case's asymptomatic direct and high-risk contacts must be tested between Day 5 and 14 of coming in contact.
Guidelines issued, soon private labs will begin testing
With India's scale of testing being questioned, ICMR is all set to give 51 private hospitals and laboratories the green-signal to test coronavirus. The protocol will remain the same. The guidelines for this process was issued by the Union Health Ministry this Tuesday. The price of these tests is likely to be capped between Rs. 4,500 and Rs. 5,000, reports said.
