As the number of Covid-19 infection is rising in the country, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has increased the frequency of random sample testing of people displaying flu-like symptoms but do not have any history of travelling to coronavirus affected countries in the recent past. This is being done to determine if "community transmission" is taking place in India.
In a press conference on Tuesday, March 17, Balram Bhargava, director-general of the Indian Council of Medical Research tried to bring calm and said that there is no evidence of "community transmission" so far.
All the recorded cases are mainly of imported origin, meaning people who travelled to coronavirus affected countries and contracted the virus. He also said that there is no need for indiscriminatory testing at this stage.
Random sample tests
According to Economic Times, 51 ICMR laboratories have stared testing random samples from people admitted in the intensive care unit of various hospitals with severe acute respiratory illnesses (SARI).
"We are already doing surveillance for SARI cases. The data will become available in a couple of days." ICMR chief epidemiologist RR Gangakhedkar told ET.
"Our immediate worry is to find out evidence if we have landed into community transmission," he added. The exercise has started from March 15 and ICMR has sent 20 samples to each of the 51 laboratories all over the country.
What is community transmission?
"Community transmission" is a phase when a person with no travel history to disease affected countries or contact with know infected person tests positive. Such cases exhibit that the transmission of the disease is taking place by exposure to the secondary or tertiary level contacts of the infected person.
"It is still not an infection which has gone into community infection. There is still no evidence of a case that acquired an infection from domestic sources where there is no travel history," Gangakhedkar said.
Experts at the ICMR said there were four stages of the disease.
- Stage-1 is getting imported cases.
- Stage-2 is local transmission.
- Stage-3 is community transmission.
- Stage-4 is when it turns into an epidemic.
India is at stage 2 currently.
Not enough tests:
There has been concern that India is not conducting enough tests to check the spread of COVID-19. Many travellers who came back from international trips complained that they could not get themselves tested for coronavirus in spite of telling it to authorities.
The one reason for not conducting tests on travellers or people with flu-like symptoms is the ICMR COVID-19 test policy.
The medical research body does not want to conduct the tests on a mass level and wants to limit it to specific cases, for now. "First of all, we don't want to do any indiscriminate testing as now everybody is asking for a test, so somewhere you will have to rationalize the test," said Nivedita Gupta, scientist, epidemiology and communicable diseases, ICMR.
According to ICMR only those who have travelled to the affected countries or had first level contact with confirmed positive patients need to self-quarantine themselves for 14-days. "During those 14 days, if he becomes symptomatic, he should be laboratory tested. If the person is asymptomatic, he doesn't need to be tested," Nivedita Gupta said.
Since the first case of coronavirus came to light on January 30, more than 11, 500 people have been tested, according to Dr Balram Bhargava. 139 people have been tested positive.
In the statement, the nodal health research boy has said that it is equipped to handle more volumes of samples if the need arises.
Covid-19 testing laboratories
There are currently 65 laboratories equipped to conduct the COVID-19 tests, and 31 labs to take secondary tests to reconfirm the virus. Even after raising the number of random spale tests to 20 by each 51 ICMR laboratories, they are hugely insufficient to conduct a confirmatory test in 732 districts of India.
So far 15 states and Union Territories have recorded case of coronavirus with a total number of cases in the standing at 126 on March 17.
Covid-19 test price:
The current cost of testing each sample is around Rs 5000. The Insurance Regulatory and development authority of India have instructed all the health insurance companies to cover the cost for COVID-19 irrespective the type of policy.
