Telangana government says 'no' to coronavirus random rapid testing

Hyderabad: The Telangana government has ruled out taking up random rapid tests in the state. Stating this here on Tuesday, Health Minister Eatala Rajender said the Health department was strictly following the guidelines of the ICMR. He said some political parties were criticising the government saying that it was not taking up random sample tests as was being done in some states. Some were even highlighting the numbers tested by neighbouring states, he said.

Eatala said that the ICMR guidelines issued on March 17 and April 17 with regard to Covid-19 pandemic were being followed by the government in letter and spirit. The guidelines clearly stated that the samples must be collected from people having virus-related symptoms as nasal swab collection in asymptomatic persons is difficult and cannot be taken perfectly and easily. This condition puts to rest arguments on asymptomatic testing not being done in Telangana, the minister said. He said the government would not hesitate to conduct sample testing on frontline staff, including the healthcare personnel involved in Covid-19 duties, police or even for that matter the journalists who made an appeal to conduct sample testing on them for staying outdoors on duty for the last few weeks.

Eatala further stated that they got some cases where people have voluntarily come forward to go for the sample testing as someone close to them have tested positive and the Health department assessed their condition and necessary protocols were followed, he added.

As regards to the denial of permission to sample testing in private laboratories, the minister said the government took this decision as it did not want to create panic among the public who may otherwise rush to labs for testing unnecessarily and give scope to hospitals fleece them. The government has been working out its strategies after a careful study of the situation in different countries and states. Several companies have come forward offering supply of lakhs of kits to the government, but, he said, the department after taking different strains in each country into consideration did not go in for lakhs of kits and unnecessary random tests and the stand of the government has been vindicated by ICMR's latest guidelines.

The minister pointed out that 7.16 lakh sample tests were done across India thus far out of which 29,000 samples were found to be infected (4.1 percent positive), while Telangana had conducted over 19,000 tests out of which 1,009 tested positive (5.3 percent positive). He said the state government had created necessary medical infrastructure to meet any emergency but was praying that there should be no need to utilise the newly-created facilities.