Telangana mulls large-scale rapid testing of 4Lakh in hotspots

Hyderabad: In the wake of surge in number of Corona positive cases during the last two days, the government has acquired 4 lakh rapid testing kits to take up testing of all people in the hotspots and red zones in the state in about 19 districts.

Initially, the Health department is targeting to conduct corona tests on nearly 2 lakh people in Hyderabad, Warangal, Karimnagar, Nizamabad, etc from where Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) activists attended a religious meet in Nizamuddin, Delhi.

A few days ago, a three-year old kid in Niloufer hospital and a 50-year old woman from Shadnagar have tested positive.

This despite parents of the kid not having any foreign travel or contact history and so does the elderly woman from Shadnagar who died after which tests confirmed she was Covid-19 positive. It was learnt that the elderly woman rented her house to TJ activists.

Post these cases, the Health department has decided to go in for a large scale testing of the people having symptoms like fever, severe cold or cough or breathing or respiratory issues in these 19 districts even if they don't have any foreign or Delhi travel history or none from their family or relatives were Covid-19 suspects so far.

Rapid testing which is serological testing uses a finger prick of blood and a small strip, similar to a combination of a blood glucose test. The sample can be collected by health teams in the house of the person who is ill and then sent to lab.

Also the test results will be out in 15 minutes to 2 hours at the most.

Until recently, people with suspected Covid-19 symptoms were taken to designated hospitals like Gandhi where their samples were collected and Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) test was done to ascertain whether they were infected or not.

This test result used to take nearly 6 to 8 hours. Elaborating details, a doctor who is working on the ground and involved in this rapid testing stated that the serological testing is being done already on Markaz attendees or their contacts.

The sample will be collected and sent to labs and in the meantime the people concerned have to remain in isolation at home.

This test gives indication of presence of any infection and afterwards the concerned person will be taken to designated hospital to conduct RT-PCR test for final confirmation. Those who come positive in rapid testing will also test positive in RT-PCR method, the doctors said.

Health department officials stated that the rapid testing on over 2 lakh population will give a clear picture if there are instances of community spread of virus are there or not.