AGGRESSIVE TESTING IN GERMANY
Germany, which tested 483,295 samples for Covid-19 as of March 22, said it is testing 500,000 people a week. Germany, as of Monday morning, with a little over 62,000 cases, has managed to keep the number of deaths to 540, a fatality rate of under 0.9 son for test will ensure infection does not spread fast. I think number of tests will go up in the coming days as more people have entered UP.”
West Bengal, with population of 91 million, and 20 Covid-19 cases and one death has conducted 389 tests. Chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, blamed the Centre saying the kits were not available, governor, Jagdeep Dhankhar, on Sunday claimed the Centre has provided 10,000 coronavirus kits to the state.
State health officials, however, said there was shortage of RNA extraction kits, needed to identify the new strain of coronavirus.
There are six laboratories including a private one to conduct tests in Bengal and five more are waiting for approval from the ICMR.
Dr Sumon Poddar, associate professor, Institute of Child Health, Kolkata, however, said that most of the tests were limited to urban areas even though flow of migrant labourers to rural Bengal has increased in the past few days.
“Tests help to identify Covid-19 hotspots quickly and that is the reason the WHO has been asking governments to conduct as many tests as possible,” he said.
Bihar with population of 90.9 million and 15 Covid-19 cases n has conducted 792 tests. Two labs in Patna are authorised to conduct the tests. Bihar Covid-19 nodal officer, Dr Ragini Mishra, defended the low number of tests saying they were following health ministry’s guidelines. “The guidelines do not suggest taking samples of those who are asymptomatic,” she said.
Dr Ajay Kumar said less than 800 samples tests were “far too inadequate” for a populated state like Bihar. “The state has not been able to thoroughly test the 1 lakh-plus migrant labourers who returned during the lockdown period. Our people work in Maharashtra, Kerala and UP, which are among some of the worst Covid-19 affected states in India. Moreover, Bihar also shares an open border with Nepal,” he said.
The number of samples for testing has increased since March 24, when the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS) became the second centre to commence real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), a confirmatory test for Covid-19.
Madhya Pradesh with 72.6 million people, have tested 525 samples till March 28 at the two labs --- AIIMS, Bhopal and NIRTH, Jabalpur.
“If small state like Kerala can test 500 persons every day, why can’t MP test at least 1,000 persons every day. Kerala has as many as 16 labs whereas MP had only two labs till a couple of days back,” said Amulya Nidhi, director of Jan Swashthya Arogya, a social organisation working in the field of health.
Additional director, department of health, Sapna Lovanshi, said, “We are having five laboratories now. Our department is taking all the measures to test all the samples collected and control spread of the virus as per guidelines of the central and the state governments.”
Jharkhand, which has so far not reported a single positive case of Covid-19, has tested only 196 persons, lowest in the country along with much smaller and sparsely populated Himachal Pradesh. Giving the reason, Dr Manoj Kumar, head of Ranchi based Rajender Institute of Medical Sciences microbiology department, said they have not noticed any spurt in cases in the past one week. “If needed, we can scale up the testing,” he said.
Most state health departments are, however, increasing the capacity to conduct tests.
Punjab, which is conducting, 160 tests every day in two labs, plans to increase it to 400 every day by next week. Principal Secretary, Medical Education and Research, M Tiwari, said the
Note: Testing data for China, Germany and Spain is as on February 24, March 22 and March 18 respectively
8,51,578
1,27,737
30,000
27,005
machines will come by March end to increasing the testing capacity.
Karnataka CM BS Yediyurappa on Sunday said there was no shortage of kits to conduct tests and the state has the highest number of testing centres at 11, apart from sample collection centres spread across the state. It has conducted 3170 tests so far.
Telangana chief minister K C Rao said testing has been increased around 50% since March 24 and it will further go up in the next few days. Andhra Pradesh will also increase tests from present 251 to close to 1,000 by next week.
“Given the lack of adequate testing facilities and expensive kits, it is not possible to test every suspect. If the facilities are increased, the governments can do random testing to ensure that there is no spread of the disease,” Hyderabad based health expert, M Somasekhar, said.
However, the state health department officials assured that the number of tests would be increased in the coming days if there is spurt in Covid-19 cases and new hotspots emerge.
Kasargod in Kerala, Indore in Madhya Pradesh, Bhilwara in Rajasthan and Shaheed Bhagat Singh (SBS) Nagar district of Punjab are some of the identified Covid-19 hotspots in India.