Given the rise in Covid cases and positivity rate, the health department has mandated Covid testing of all patients visiting health centres with influenza-like illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory infections (SARI). It has also revived the system of testing all primary contacts of Covid patients.
The department outlined these rules in a circular issued on April 12, which also increased the state’s daily testing target to 20,000. Targets for all districts have been specified, including 5,000 for BBMP.
All public and private hospitals already had the mandate to test suspected Covid cases, but this has not been happening in practice, says Dr Naveen Bhat, Mission Director, National Health Mission (Karnataka). Instead, patients were being treated as regular viral fever cases, without testing.
“Now all hospitals will have to test symptomatic cases, like in the earlier days of Covid. Covid is a notifiable disease, it will spread, so patients can’t refuse testing,” Bhat said. If private hospitals don’t submit testing data, Deputy Commissioners of that district will monitor them as per the Karnataka Private Medical Establishments (KPME) Act, he added.
The state had also nearly dismantled the system of contact tracing and testing. As per Wednesday’s circular, all primary contacts of the patient in the home and workplace should be tested.
“These measures are expected to increase the daily testing numbers to 20,000. With this, the state’s weekly test positivity rate (TPR) is expected to reduce from over 3.5% currently, to 2%,” Bhat said. “Union government’s guidelines recommend 140 tests per million of the population. As per that, Karnataka is required to do only 10,000-11,000 tests daily. But given the rise in cases, we have increased our target.”
Though the state had a daily testing target of 15,000 until now, the numbers had dipped to around 3,000 in March. With rising cases, testing has now increased to over 10,000. “We expect to reach the 20,000 target in a week. Currently, we have not got requests from any district for additional testing staff. We will sanction more staff if we get such requests,” Bhat said.
Among international passengers, the current system of testing symptomatic and random 2% arrivals will continue. Of the total tests, at least 70% should be RT-PCR and the rest RAT, says the circular.