ICMR Expands Covid-19 Testing Ambit; Says Every Symptomatic Person Should Be Tested

The ICMR expanded the range of testing and unlike earlier advisory has suggested that every symptomatic individual should be tested.

Photo: PTI

New Delhi: As the number of coronavirus cases in India continues to rise the medical research body, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has said that coronavirus tests should be made available to every symptomatic person. ALSO READ| Delhi Speeding Up To Overtake Mumbai In Covid-19 Infections? Here's What The Corona Stats Suggest In an earlier order issued on May 18, the ICMR had suggested testing symptomatic persons but it only focussed on health care workers, migrant workers who were returning to their native places, hospitals, containment zones, and coronavirus hotspots. According to a new advisory 'Newer Additional Strategies for COVID-19 Testing,' the ICMR has expanded the extent of testing. It says in the new advisory, ‘since the test, track and treat is the only way to prevent the spread of infection and save lives, it is imperative that testing should be made widely available to all symptomatic individuals in every part of the country and contact tracing mechanisms for containment of infection are further strengthened.’ It further said ‘ICMR advises all concerned State Governments, Public and Private Institutions to take required steps to scale-up testing for COVID-19 by deploying a combination of various tests as advised above’ ICMR has also recommended that all government, private hospitals, offices, and public sector units be enabled to conduct antibody-based testing. This is to make surveillance better and help the medical body to understand evolving trends of the infection and also to reduce anxiety especially among health care workers and office employees. ALSO READ| Are We Any Closer To Getting A Vaccine For Coronavirus? A Look At The Progress Again this is different from its earlier advisory in which the rapid antibody testing was focussed on coronavirus clusters, large migration gatherings/evacuees centers, and testing of those individuals who were showing influenza-like symptoms at the facility level. Hospitals, India saw one of the biggest single-day spikes of coronavirus cases today with a spike of almost 16k fresh in the last 24 hours taking the total to 4,56,183 Globally, India falls in the list of top 5 countries with the highest number of cases and is still the fourth-worst affected country in the world after Russia with 5,98,878 total cases.