State government has defended its decision to limit tests ‘as per guidelines of the ICMR’.
Telangana is in the league of West Bengal among the states in the country as far as conducting fewer rapid Covid-19 tests, thus giving scope for Opposition parties BJP and Congress to level charges that the K. Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) government is fudging the actual virus related figures. However, the state government defended its decision to limit tests as per guidelines of ICMR.
Telangana is at 17th place, second from bottom, with 17,278 tested samples, followed by Jharkhand with 15,908, while preceded by Bihar with 29,328 tested samples (16th spot), West Bengal with 30,141 (15th spot) and Punjab with 32,060 tested samples (14th spot) in the country, by this weekend. As on Saturday, Telangana accounted for 360 active cases and 29 deaths.
On the contrary, neighbouring Andhra Pradesh is much ahead in sample testing—with 1,41,274 (3rd spot in the country) only preceded by Maharashtra with 1,818,746 tests (2nd) and Tamil Nadu with 1,88,241 samples tested with first spot. The main charge against Telangana or for that Bengal and other less tested states is that they are hiding the cases, and thus the accurate picture of Covid spread.
Even the Telangana High Court has taken a public litigation petition filed by Prof P.L. Visweshwar Rao that Telangana had deliberately stopped testing people so that it can escape from its duty to give proper care and treatment to the case positive people. A bench of HC headed by Chief Justice R.S. Raghavendra Chauhan heard the case on Friday and posted it to 14 May for the next hearing.
This charge against the government is also heard from other political quarters—Opposition BJP and Congress, too, levelled the same terming the official move as a grave threat to public safety and security at a later stage when the pandemic goes out of control, due to poor testing of samples. BJP’s state unit president and MP Bandi Sanjay wrote about it to Health Minister Harshavardhan.
However, this has been stoutly rejected by both Chief Minister KCR and Telangana Health Minister Etela Rajender. While talking to this newspaper on Saturday, Rajender said: “Whatever we have been doing is as per the guidelines of ICMR (Indian Council for Medical Research). The guidelines say sample testing is to be done only on the vulnerable or suspected persons, not others,” he said.
Under this classification, only those who are primary contact persons of the Covid positive cases or those who are immediate family members of the affected persons (even if they are asymptomatic) and those who are living in the containment zones (where Covid positive people live) are tested and all others are exempted from the procedure. Persons with asymptomatic positive tested are allowed to stay at home quarantine, while those with clear symptoms are admitted to notified Covid hospitals in Hyderabad. The problem here is that some people completely unconnected with the positive people are seeking sample tests on suspicion that they had symptoms. The doctors are refusing to test such persons.
Slowing down of sample tests has something to do with confusion prevailed after ICMR asked all states to stop testing two weeks ago, due to doubts raised over the Chinese kits. The ICMR after two days allowed the states to resume testing, but doubts still persisted over reliability of rapid (antibodies) tests.
“We have imported sufficient rapid test kits, but after doubts were raised over whether their results are reliable to decide a person Covid positive, we have slowed down the process. As it takes 7-14 days for antibodies to develop in a patient’s body, we cannot rely on the outcome, even if a person tested negative through rapid testing,” said a doctor on condition of anonymity. At the same time, there has been no let up in the RT-PCR tests which conclusively decide whether a person has Covid or not, the doctor explained, in cases where such testing is necessary. “So, here the question is not to suppress the actual figures or save money on testing, but to avoid unnecessary confusion among the public,” the doctor said. At his daily media briefing on Friday night too, Rajender talked about this controversy. “How can we hide deaths as everyone knows the facts. Moreover, our Covid situation handling has been praised by the Centre. Of the total 33 districts in Telangana, already nine are in green and now we have asked the Centre to declare another 14 districts to be added to this,” said the minister. The Centre is expected to issue a notification to this effect on Monday. If this is done, only three districts will be in red zone, while seven in orange zone in Telangana. The minister had admitted that sample testing has been stopped on the dead persons (with other ailments) in tune with the ICMR guidelines only.