The Central government on Friday issued a set of fresh guidelines to meet the challenge of rise in COVID cases, some of which have already been implemented by the Telangana government.
In a letter to Chief Secretaries of all States, Secretary of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare Rajesh Bhushan and Secretary of the Department of Health Research Balram Bhargava asked State governments to increase testing by widespread use of rapid antigen tests in specific situations where RTPCR testing posed challenges.
Based on previous experience, it was observed that if the number of cases rose above a certain threshold, RTPCR based testing led to delays in confirming diagnosis due to its turnaround time of about five to eight hours.
It was also emphasised that during the current upsurge of COVID cases, any individual having fever and with or without cough, headache, sore throat, breathlessness, body ache, recent loss of taste or smell, fatigue and diarrhoea should be considered a suspect case of COVID unless proven otherwise. All such individuals must be tested, which Telangana has followed.
While awaiting the test results, they must be advised to immediately isolate themselves and follow home isolation.
