BBMP awaits rules to test everyone for Covid-19 in hotspots

The recent advisory by the Indian Council of Medical Research on testing strategy, recommended by the national Covid-19 taskforce, says 100% of residents in containment zones must be subjected to Rapid Antigen Tests.

The BBMP war room data available until last Sunday reveals that Bengaluru has 17,282 containment zones, of which 14,520 are active.

BBMP nodal officer for testing Rajendra Cholan told DH that they are awaiting guidelines from the health department on testing everybody in containment zones.
For now, they are testing symptomatic people, primary contacts, SARI/ILI cases, senior citizens with co-morbidities, which Cholan says covers almost everyone.

He told DH: "Our strategy currently is to send the line list of symptomatic people and primary contacts of positive cases to the respective zonal coordinators (government-appointed zonal IAS officers) and get them tested. For testing 100%, we are awaiting guidelines from the government or the health department. Once they bring in the strategy, we will go for testing everyone."

The BBMP war room’s report dated September 6 put RR Nagar (3,155), Bommanahalli (2,893), Mahadevapura (2,410), Yelahanka (1,684), and West (1,525) as the top five zones with the highest number of containment zones in the city that has eight zones.

Some disagree with data

Zonal officers disagreed with the data.

R Vishal, in-charge of RR Nagar zone, said: "We have 1,665 active containment zones only. I don't know how the war room got that figure. Since, as per the current definition of a containment zone, only the house of the infected individual has to be considered, we are testing primary and secondary contacts in the house. We are doing 40% antigen tests and 60% RTPCR."

Vishal said the zone is testing 11 primary contacts for every patient. While the zone tested 2,500 on September 6, it tested 2,200 a day before. Roughly, the target is 150 tests per PHC. There are 14 PHCs in the zone.

"The positivity rate in RR Nagar zone for RT-PCR is 12% and 9% for Rapid Antigen Tests. With a population of 12 lakh, there are 4,938 active cases as of September 6. Half of the patients are at home and the rest at CCCs and hospitals," he said.

A programme officer for testing in the East zone said there are 134 active clusters and not 613 active containment zones, as claimed by the war room report.

"We are doing all tests in the containment zones itself. Around 739 Rapid Antigen Tests and 1,675 RT-PCR tests were done on September 7. On September 6, 566 Rapid Antigen Tests and 1,382 RT-PCR tests were done in 134 active clusters," she said.

To assess what percentage of the population residing in containment zones is being tested, the total population and those tested have to be collated, which is not being done currently, said Dr G K Suresh, City Programme Management Officer, National Urban Health Mission, BBMP.