In a major shift of policy, J&K Government has barred RT-PCR COVID19 testing of any individual who is not symptomatic. All kinds of ‘unnecessary’ testing, including that of recovered admitted patients will also stop.
Over the past month, there have been frequent complaints of COVID19 test results getting delayed by days and sometimes weeks due to the backlog in testing laboratories, a senior official in the health department said. He said that due to overwhelming sampling, the laboratories have thousands of unprocessed samples.
An order issued late Monday evening by J&K Government titled Advisory for COVID19 RT-PCR testing/collection of samples acknowledges this problem and has directed all Chief Medical Officers of the 10 districts of Kashmir division to adhere to the guidelines issued.
The directions have been passed by Tahir Ahmed Magrey, In-charge of Kashmir division’s COVID19 Control Room, based on the guidelines of union Health Ministry and Indian Council of Medical Research. As per the new guidelines, no person who has tested positive on Rapid Antigen Test or RT-PCR will be retested.
“There is a tendency among people to get a repeat test done in case they test positive on any of the testing methods,” the official told the Greater Kashmir. He said the repeat tests not only put an extra burden on the labs but were unnecessary. “False positives are unheard of in this infection. So there is no need to get a repeat test done,” he said.
The guidelines have also directed medicos to stop subjecting a recovered patient to test for confirming negative status at the time of discharge. As per ICMR, a COVID19 positive person cannot transmit infection after 10 days of testing positive, therefore, if recovered, the test becomes useless.
In addition, a person who is healthy and does not have symptoms of COVID19 will not get tested on RT-PCR. The RT-PCR, the official said, is a gold standard test and the laboratory capacity for this test is limited. “It must be reserved for sick cases and those with comorbidities. Travelers’ and random sampling will be carried out using RAT tests as is the norm, the official said.
