Grappling with a sharp spike in COVID-19 cases in Bengaluru, the State government is all set to start conducting 20,000 rapid antigen tests in the city from Saturday.

This will be apart from the regular RTPCR tests that have been happening. The point-of-care rapid antigen tests will yield results within 30 minutes.

The State received one lakh antigen test kits on Thursday and has placed orders for additional two lakh. All ILI and SARI cases apart from high risk contacts, healthcare and frontline workers and people aged above 50 with comorbidities will be tested initially, said Medical Education Minister K. Sudhakar.

Addressing presspersons on Friday, he said of the one lakh kits 50,000 tests will be done in Bengaluru and the remaining in districts depending on the case load. The central team that had visited the State early this week had recommended ramping up of tests in the State.

C.N. Manjunath, nodal officer of labs and testing in the State’s COVID-19 task force, said testing will be ramped up further in the next 10 days after the two lakh test kits arrive.

He said health authorities will use the kits in mobile ambulances, fever clinics and door-to-door surveys to identify positive patients immediately.

“As the results will be available within 30 minutes, it will accelerate the process of identifying positive cases. The plan is to ramp up testing to nearly 30,000 samples a day in the next 10 days,” he said. As of now, the State is testing an average of 18,000 samples a day and has a backlog of over 15,000 samples.

Appealing to all private hospitals to start conducting antigen tests, Dr. Manjunath said this will avoid patients running from one hospital to another for want of a COVID-19 test. “As it costs just ₹450, the hospitals can test every patient with the rapid antigen kits and start treatment depending on the results,” he said.

Guidelines

Based on the advisory issued by ICMR on rapid antigen detection test kits, the State government on Friday issued guidelines on the use of the kits. All hospitals, laboratories, medical establishments (both government and private) intending to perform rapid antigen tests should mandatorily register with ICMR, and enter positive and negative results of each person on ICMR portal.

Failure to register with ICMR or uploading COVID-19 results of each person on portal will be liable for action under the Epidemic Diseases Act.