Aggressive testing

 

The number of covid-19 cases just continue to surge and this month alone, almost six thousand have been added up to take the overall tally close to another grim milestone of 26000 mark. More than 100 people also lost battle with the deadly virus as the death toll increased from 379 by the end of the last month to around 490 in 11 days since. The increase in number is disturbing for the fact that there has been extended lockdown after Eid-ul-Adha in most parts of the Valley and one district of Jammu division. The lockdown in ordinary sense should have helped contain the virus spread but unfortunately the numbers are growing and lack of large-scale testing, tracing and isolation of the infected and their contacts seems to be the reason for it.

The low daily testing numbers are also reflected in low tests per million population. With J&K having around 1.2 crore population, the number of tests conducted so far is 740000. The Jammu and Kashmir have already started rapid antigen tests and there is reliance on it over more accurate RT-PCR as results come out within half an hour using this method. Technically, there could be more positive patients given the less accuracy of the test but it is still useful for the reason it provides confirmation which should be used to isolate the patients within a reasonable dispatch. Time and again the compulsion to ramp up testing has been emphasised, particularly when community transmission cannot be ruled out utterly. Countries like Italy which have succeeded in bending the graph went for aggressive testing. In the beginning, the numbers seemed to be frightening but the country like Italy used it skillfully to isolate the people and in the process contained the spread of the pestilence to a greater extend when compared to several other countries. Chennaiā€™s case can be emulated as aggressive testing through fever clinics helped it halve the number of daily fresh cases and further reduction became possible in the last few days. There has been renewed commitment to trace contacts, including non-family members, since last month and it has helped in bringing down the numbers to far below that it used to be. The administration must ensure aggressive testing as well as forceful contact tracing. Of late the latter seems to be less on the agenda of the administration and this situation does not augur well for Jammu and Kashmir.

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