With the number of tests conducted per day reducing after the new testing protocol was issued 10 days ago, the State government has decided to conduct randomised testing on a large scale across the State.
C.N. Manjunath, Director of Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences, who is the nodal officer for labs and testing in the State’s COVID-19 task force, said that they will initiate this within a week. “People who are considered to have a high risk of contracting the virus due to high mobility will be tested. Those who will be tested will include delivery boys, autorickshaw drivers, pourakarmikas, fruit and vegetable vendors, railway staff, KSRTC and BMTC staff, among others,” he said.
According to Dr. Manjunath, the Chief Minister is keen on increasing the number of tests. “Our target is to ensure that at least 50,000 random tests are done in three weeks,” he added.
K. Sudhakar, Medical Education Minister, said that 15,000 to 25,000 tests should be done every day. “It needs to be done on a random basis to check for community transmission. There is a need to ensure that people in old containment zones are also tested,” he said.
Testing dips
For now, however, the testing rate remains low. The number of tests conducted on Monday were 5,362 — the lowest since May 15 when the number of tests stood at 5,351. The highest number of tests conducted were on May 30 (15,728). There has been a dip in testing after the revised testing criteria was issued by the Department of Health and Family Welfare on June 8.
However, officials attribute the drop to a reduction in the number of migrants returning from other States over the last few days.
As per data from districts compiled by the State war room as on June 15, in the last 10 days, Bengaluru Urban saw the maximum number of testing with 19,291 tests per million. Kalaburagi and Yadgir districts remained in the second and third positions, respectively.
The least number of tests per million was conducted in Bengaluru Rural. Experts pointed out that this was because Bengaluru Urban, Kalaburagi and Yadgir continue to have a high number of inter-State returnees who were being tested.
Some districts, however, are being proactive and testing outside of the protocol mandated. Kalaburagi Deputy Commissioner B. Sharath said that the district administration was testing high-risk primary contacts of those who had completed the quarantine period after returning from Maharashtra. “This is one of the reasons why the number of tests remain high as we wanted to prevent community transmission,” he said. The new testing criteria also states that if the inter-State returnees are asymptomatic, they need not be tested.