Last week, the Indian Council of Medical Research released an Advisory on Purposive Testing Strategy for COVID-19 in India. The advisory provides details on ‘who may be’ and ‘people who need not to be’ tested.
The advisory proposes that ‘asymptomatic individuals in community setting’ and ‘contacts of confirmed cases of COVID-19, unless identified as ‘high risk’, amongst others, need not be tested. The latest COVID-19 testing strategy replaces the previous advisory which was released on 4 September 2020 and among others, had the provision of COVID-19 testing on demand for ‘all individuals who wish to get themselves tested’. Clearly, there are a few paradigm shifts in the testing strategy. In this backdrop, on Wednesday last Chief Secretary ordered two lakh tests to be done on daily basis to contain the covid-19 spread.
In a right endeavor, J&K carried a record 74593 covid-19 tests on Sunday. Of them 34544 were done in Jammu and 40049 in Kashmir. The endeavor is appreciable and efforts must be continued to increasing the testing and reach the target of 2 lakh tests set by the Chief Secretary Arun Kumar Mehta . Among others he had directed the authorities to immediately activate emergency control rooms and re-activate the panchayat-level isolation facilities to contain the rural spread of the disease.
The governments must adapt and change plans with the changing situation. In this context, J&K government has already ordered an audit of various important aspects and ramping up of the infrastructure. There has been steady rise in cases from the last ten week. More than 15000 cases have been added to the tally during the time. Looking at the overall challenges thrown by the covid-19 with its high transmissible omicron variant in circulation, it has already galloped across the U.S. and many countries in Europe at a pace never seen since the pandemic began. The sharp rise in daily cases is not surprising given the highly infectious nature of the Omicron variant. As per credible estimates, it spreads nearly three times faster than the highly Delta variant which otherwise is also highly transmissible. While Omicron has emerged as the dominant variant in a few countries, it has not completely displaced the Delta variant so far even as it threatens to do so in near future. At the same time, it must be borne in mind that Delta has not been defeated. Put another way round, there are twin threats from the two variants. In such a scenario, the government must increase the daily testing numbers with more reliance on RT-PCR testing.