Bihar to use rapid kits to intensify testing

Sheezan Nezami | TNN | Updated: Apr 19, 2020, 11:18 IST

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PATNA: The Bihar government is not only following the guidelines on Covid-19 testing set by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), it has gone a step further by conducting the tests on symptomatic, asymptomatic as well as acute respiratory cases.
Unlike in Mumbai, where the criteria for testing Covid-19 suspects was tweaked earlier this week to stop the test of asymptomatic contacts then later a circular was issued stating that asymptomatic patients will be tested at the end of 14 day quarantine period, the Bihar government is testing every suspected case irrespective of whether they have any travel history or have come in direct contact with any Covid-19 positive person or not.
To intensify testing, the state government plans to use rapid test kits. Sanjay Kumar, principal secretary (health), tweeted on Saturday that the Union ministry of health and family welfare has sent 6,240 rapid test kits. “It’s an antibody-based kit. The department is formulating a comprehensive strategy for its usage,” Sanjay posted. Till now, only the RT-PCR method was being used in Bihar to test for Covid-19 virus.
According to the principal secretary, around 75% of people, who have tested positive for Covid-19 in Bihar, are asymptomatic.
As per the revised strategy for Covid-19 testing issued by ICMR on April 9, all symptomatic individuals who have undertaken international travel have to be tested and also only symptomatic contacts of laboratory confirmed cases and symptomatic health care workers are to be tested for Covid-19.
However, the state health department on March 29 ordered everyone who returned from March 18 onward to be tested whether they were symptomatic or asymptomatic. Also all contacts of positive people in Bihar are being quarantined and tested, whether they are symptomatic or not.
This criteria helped the state government in identifying 16 foreign-returned positive persons after March 29 and, 26 of their contacts, who were positive taking total number to 42 out of 85 positive cases in the state.
Later, the state health department launched a massive door- to- door screening exercise in four districts and around 8,000 villages across the state to identify Covid- 19 cases. Asha and other health workers are screening people with foreign travel history, influenza like illness (ILI) patients and Severe Acute Respiratory Illness (SARI) patients.
Surveyors will visit each household, record the names of all members of the family and names of members living in the house will separately be recorded. The surveyors will also ask the family head about any member having Covid symptoms and such persons will be put on the radar.
As per information shared by health department principal secretary, over 12.25 lakh households were surveyed in the first two days and 64.77 lakh people were screened in the exercise.
On being asked whether any such instruction was given by ICMR, Sanjay told TOI, “Bihar government took this initiative on its own upon direction from chief minister Nitish Kumar.”
Another senior official in health department claimed that this method will also check if there is any community transmission or not.
In the first two days of door-to-door survey, 712 people with cough, fever and breathing problem have been identified. Of these, 506 persons have no travel history, while 26 have come from foreign countries and 180 from other states. So far, 413 samples have been collected for test.