As cases rise, a belated move to widen test scope

As the number of cases appear to be spiralling out of control, the government has announced it will increase the scope of its testing.

Commissioner Pankaj Pandey of the Department of Health and Family Welfare said that health officials will test every individual affected by Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI) and Influenza-like illnesses (ILI) within new buffer zones.

Officials zeroed in on ILI on Wednesday, after a one-year-old boy in Kalaburagi with the illness was found to have Covid-19.

The incident triggered the emergence of one more Covid-19 case, when Patient 302 was disclosed on Thursday. The patient is a 23-year-old woman in Kalburagi, who is said to have been in contact with the boy.

Pandemic expert Dr Girdhar R Babu said that the state should ramp up its testing to the point of including anyone reporting a fever or respiratory problems.

“The silent districts and silent taluks, which have so far reported no cases are as risky as the ones which have hotspots in them,” Dr Babu said.

“We must start setting up surveillance systems in every district or what we might see happen is that when the lockdown is lifted on May 3 for example, there will be a sharp jump in the numbers,” he explained.

He also pointed out that the government’s decision to start SARI testing was a wise one, because the timeline of the pandemic had shown that in whichever district the health officers had started testing for SARI, they had uncovered Covid-19 cases.

Minister S Suresh Kumar pointed out that the state’s Covid-19 positive index was 2.3% “This percentage is a result of 13,724 samples being tested, out of which 315 were confirmed as positive,’ he said.