The Union Health Ministry on Wednesday said that the availability of products for testing Covid-19 has “significantly enhanced” in the country and citizens can now easily get the tests done through home antigen test and rapid antigen tests, apart from the previously available option of RT-PCR.
ICMR Chief Dr Balram Bhargava said that the purposive testing strategy has also been implemented for early detection of symptomatic cases for quick isolation and care, early detection of infections in the elderly and in people with co-morbidities (diabetes, hypertension, chronic lung or kidney disease, malignancy, obesity, etc) for quick care and detection of Omicron.
Standard molecular tests have been priced between Rs 400 and 500, and the end-to-end turnaround time (sample collection to individual report preparation) is 4-6 hours for RTPCR, CRISPR, RTLAMP, the health ministry said.
Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) are price between Rs 50-100 and Home Antigen Tests (HAT) are priced between Rs. 250-300, it said.
“Mild cases to get discharged after at least 7 days from testing positive and there is no need for testing prior to discharge,” Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary, Health Ministry, said. “Post-discharge, patients are advised to self-monitor their health for further seven days and shall continue wearing masks,” he added.
The central government, Dr Bhargava said, now wants to focus on purposive testing. Those who are symptomatic, at-risk contacts of lab-confirmed cases, individuals undertaking international travel and international travellers arriving at Indian airports must get themselves tested.
The ministry also informed that eight states are currently reporting highest number of covid cases and emerging as the ‘States of Concerns’. These include Maharashtra with a rate positivity rate of 22.39 per cent, West Bengal with 32.18 per cent, Delhi with 23.1 per cent and UP with 4.47 per cent positivity rate.
As many as 300 districts in India are reporting weekly Covid case positivity of more than 5 per cent, the Union government said as it urged people not to treat infection due to Omicron variant as common cold and get vaccinated.
It said Maharashtra, West Bengal, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala and Gujarat are emerging as states of concern due to the rise in Covid cases there.
Agarwal said a sharp rise in COVID-19 infections has been noted in India with the case positivity climbing to 11.05 per cent on Wednesday from 1.1 per cent on December 30. Concurrently, Covid cases have been rising globally with January 10 recording the highest ever single-day rise of 31.59 lakh cases worldwide.
The official said that currently, 300 districts in India are reporting weekly case positivity of more than 5 per cent. Informing the press conference that 19 states have over 10,000 active Covid cases, Agarwal said Maharashtra, West Bengal, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala and Gujarat are emerging as states of concern due to the rise in Covid cases there.
Stressing on the importance of getting inoculated, he quoted the World Health Organisation to say that vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization appears to be substantially higher than against symptomatic COVID-19 disease. NITI Aayog Member (Health) V K Paul said, “Omicron is not the common cold, cannot take it lightly. We need to be vigilant, get vaccinated and follow Covid-appropriate behaviour.” “Vaccination is an important pillar in our Covid response programme,” he added.
India added 1,94,720 new infections to its tally of COVID-19 cases pushing it to 3,60,70,510. Active cases have increased to 9,55,319, the highest in 211 days, while the death toll has climbed to 4,84,655 with 442 fresh fatalities. Of the total 4,868 cases of the Omicron variant, 1,805 people have recovered or migrated so far.
Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary, Health Ministry, said that the high surge is being noticed globally in 159 countries and eight countries in Europe have reported an increase of cases by more than two times in the last two weeks.
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