ICMR revises testing for hotspots

ICMR on Thursday revised its testing strategy for Covid-19 for hotspots, clusters, large migration gatherings and evacuee centres.

Here everyone showing symptoms of influenzalike illness have to be tested irrespective of their links with patients.

They will go through the regular “rRT-PCR” test within seven days of illness, and if negative an antibody test will be done after another seven days of illness.

As of now, only five category of people were tested — all symptomatic individuals with international travel in the past

14 days, and all the symptomatic contacts of labconfirmed cases, all symptomatic health care workers, all patients with Severe Acute Respiratory Illness (fever, cough and/or shortness of breath) and asymptomatic direct and high-risk contacts of a confirmed case who are tested once between Day

5 and Day 14 of coming into his/her contact.

As testing picks up —

13,143 samples were tested Wednesday out of

As scientists worldwide scramble to make Covid-19 vaccines, India too has begun work whole genome sequencing of coronavirus to understand the evolution of the virus.

Elsewhere in the world, a drug called EIDD-2801 is also going for clinical trials.

overall 1.3 lakhs so far — health agencies believe the numbers may also shoot up.

Expanding the ambit of the treatment of critical Covid-19 patients, India is exploring several medical options, besides hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), given in combination with antibiotic azithromycin, and antiviral drugs. Convalescent plasma therapy has reportedly been successful in countries like South Korea, China and the United States.

Doctors have claimed the condition of critically ill Covid-19 patients improved substantially after being given antibody-rich plasma from others who had recovered earlier.

Elsewhere in the world, a drug called EIDD-2801 is also going for clinical trials after it showed it can reduce lung damage during Covid-19.

As scientists worldwide scramble to make Covid19 vaccines, India too has begun work whole genome sequencing of coronavirus to understand the evolution of the virus.

To strengthen the health infrastructure in states, the Centre has so far disbursed `4,113 crore from the `15,000crore Covid Emergency Response and Health System Preparedness Package. This includes mounting emergency response to slow and limit Covid-19’s spread, setting up of laboratories, bolstering surveillance activities, bio-security preparedness and pandemic research.

Tamil Nadu (738), Delhi

(669), Telangana (471), Uttar Pradesh (410), Rajasthan (383), Andhra Pradesh (363) and Kerala

(345) too have a high case load.

●

●