Private labs allowed to conduct Covid test

CASES CLIMB Tally rises by 79 in a day to 315 as worries of community spread mount

NEW DELHI: The government allowed private laboratories to test for the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) on Saturday as the number of patients soared by 79, its sharpest daily spike yet, to cross 300 and triggered concerns that the disease was entering a deadly third phase of the outbreak.

The Union ministry of health and welfare order opening up testing for Covid-19 to private laboratories — until now, only government facilities were permitted — came after days of appeal by experts to widen testing in order to accurately understand the extent of the outbreak.

The order, signed by health secretary Preeti Sudan, didn’t expand the conditions for testing. Only those in contact with a previously confirmed patient, health workers showing symptoms of Covid-19 and patients hospitalised with Severe Acute Respiratory Illness can be tested.

The maximum cost of the test cannot exceed ~4,500 – this includes ~1,500 for a screening test and ~3,000 for a confirmation test. “The ICMR encourages free or subsidized testing in this hour of national public health emergency,” the order read.

The facilities need at least biosafety level-2 certification, and are required to share real-time testing data with the government. The facilities will need to collect a government identity card to confirm the current address and phone number of a patient at the time of sample collection.

“Preferably home collection of samples may be done…this will help avoid the contact of people with the suspect case during local travel to the laboratory,” the order read.

Testing can be done only after a prescription signed by a qualified physician who has followed criteria laid down by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the country’s top medical research body.

Only laboratories certified by the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration are eligible.

“The government has been working on engaging private players in its mission to fight the coronavirus disease outbreak since the beginning. It is one of the preparedness strategies to involve private players in cases numbers rise significantly that would need pooling of all available resources be it testing, isolation, management, etc,” said a senior Union health ministry official, requesting anonymity.

needed, we may go for it (lockdown). All steps are being

The official refused to specify The official refused to specify when private laboratories will start testing but added that it was up to the facilities. “The ICMR will start approving the laboratories as soon as the labs approach, assuring all the requirements have been fulfilled,” the official added.

The health ministry order said all positive cases of Covid-19 will need to be transported to the National Institute of Virology in Pune, and all negative samples destroyed in a week. “Failure to comply with any of the above guidelines will result in legal action,” the order read.

The order came on a day the number of Covid-19 cases in India spiked by the highest quantum since the first case was reported. Over the past 48 hours, the number of cases have jumped by 142, sparking fears of an exponential jump in cases next week.

Also on Saturday, a 41-yearold woman in Pune tested positive for Covid-19, becoming the second patient in India with no history of foreign travel or documented contact with previous cases and fuelling fears that the country had slipped into the deadly third phase of the infection when the contagion spreads rapidly.

At this stage of the outbreak , known as the community transmission phase, the origin of any individual patient’s infection cannot be pinpointed to travel to a global hotspot of the disease, or documented contact with a previously infected person. This means that the virus is freely circulating in the community, making it tough for authorities to control its spread or enforce containment measures.

In countries worst-hit by the coronavirus disease, or Covid-19, such as China, Italy, Iran or South Korea, the number of infections and fatalities rose sharply once the country moved into the community transmission phase.

There are four stages of an outbreak. Stage I is when cases are imported by travellers from other countries, Stage II is when these travellers then pass on the infection locally to people living or working around them, Stage III is when community transmission happens and the health care workers are unable to trace the source of infections, and the last Stage IV is when the disease is widespread in a population.

India is currently in the Stage II of the outbreak, according to the health ministry. Four people have died of the disease in the country.

The case of the Pune woman, confirmed by the National Institute of Virology in Pune, came a day after the government admitted that it had yet not traced the origin of the infection of a 20-year-old Delhi resident who had tested positive in Chennai earlier this week.

The authorities are yet to find out how the Pune woman got the infection. “We are still investigating the case. She must have come in contact with someone who had foreign travel history,” Pune district collector Naval Kishore Ram said.

Late evening, authorities in West Bengal reported that a 57-year-old man, who had not travelled abroad and had no documented contact with a previous patient, had tested positive for Covid-19 – indicating that more cases of people with no obvious origin of infection were showing up across the country.

The case was confirmed by two state government laboratories but not by the NIV, the national nodal authority, at the time of going to print.

On Friday, India expanded its testing protocol for Covid-19 patients. The revised strategy, after the third meeting of ICMR constituted task force on testing on Friday, also included asymptomatic direct and high-risk contacts of a confirmed case who should be tested between day 5 and day 14 of coming in contact with a laboratory posi“If tive case. “Direct and high-risk contact include those who live in the same household with a confirmed case and healthcare workers who examined a confirmed case without adequate protection as per WHO recommendation,” the circular read.

The health ministry order came on a day the Empowered Committee for Covid-19 response met for the first time.

The meeting was co-chaired by Dr. Vinod Paul, Member NITI-Aayog and K. Vijay Raghavan, principal scientific advisor to the government .