Delhi model to fight coronavirus in Telangana

Coronavirus in Telangana: Telangana has adopted the national capital Delhi model of testing in its measures to combat Covid-19. From March to July first week, Telangana depended on RT-PCR testing, with maximum per day not crossing 5,000. After Centre's directions to ramp up testing and taking into account Delhi's revised testing model, Telangana too went the Delhi way.

Delhi, which was one of the country's biggest hotspots, has seen a sharp dip of coronavirus cases in recent weeks and much of it has to do with the ramped-up testing, with nearly 20,000 rapid tests done per day. While 2.9 lakh people were tested in Delhi between April 1 and June 14, as many as 2.4 lakh people have been tested between June 15 and June 30 giving an idea of how the Delhi government changed its testing priorities.

If we consider Telangana, the number of tests done from March 2 till July 9 was roughly one lakh, but from July 10 till July 26 the tests done were over 2.6 lakh and the credit for the sea-change in numbers is due to rapid tests.

A senior official under condition of anonymity stated that Telangana did not think of a rapid test model and preferred to do only RT-PCR until Delhi's good results shot into limelight.

Delhi which used to log nearly 3000 cases a day a month ago is now reporting less than half of it thanks to ramped up testing. Likewise, Telangana which used to do tests in the range of 3000 to 4000 mostly for a month between June second week to July second week is doing 12,000 to 15,000 tests per day because of which the cases positivity rate fell drastically.

Dr GVS Murthy, Director, Indian Institute of Public Health (IIPH), Hyderabad stated that Telangana should back up its testing model by doing RT-PCR tests for negative results from rapid tests.

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