Bengal begins rapid antibody testing amid row over screening ambit
The West Bengal government on Monday started rapid antibody testing to check further spread of COVID-19 in the state, barely 48 hours after the Calcutta High Court directed it to test more samples on “war footing.”
The West Bengal government on Monday (April 20) started rapid antibody testing to check further spread of COVID-19 in the state, barely 48 hours after the Calcutta High Court directed it to test more samples on “war footing.”
However, with the health department directing the testing centres to ration the available kits, it is unlikely that the screening ambit in the state would expand significantly.
The health department, in an advisory to hospitals and testing labs, directed that a prior approval should be taken from it before undertaking rapid tests in any area “considering the limited numbers of testing kits, and to avoid wastage of this precious resource.”
The department has listed 14 hospitals and testing laboratories in its 28 health districts for conducting the rapid tests. The department sources said the drive was started with just 10,000 test kits it has received from the Centre after placing a demand of 50 thousand kits.
The need for mass testing was felt as the number of active cases in the state reached 245, while 12 persons have died so far and 73 others were discharged after treatment, as on Monday.
The antibody test is relatively cheaper and faster as compared to the PCR test, which is currently the standard test being carried out across the country to detect COVID-19 cases. But antibody tests cannot specify whether an individual has contacted coronavirus. It can only pick up an early infection of any virus even in an asymptomatic person, thus helping doctors to identify people who need further screening for COVID-19.
“Rapid tests will be conducted at hotspots, clusters, containment zones or as surveillance tools for epidemiological purposes in areas where cases have not been reported so far,” the state health department said in an advisory.
The department further directed all the 14 hospitals and testing labs not to “instantaneously” reveal the result of the rapid tests to the persons who will be tested. It said the gag order is aimed at preventing any “panic mongering.”
The department will also start pool testing of samples in low-risk zones which have so far reported two per cent or lesser cases, sources said. For pool testing, samples of five possible asymptomatic suspects are pooled and tested together. A negative result will prove that all five samples in the pool are negative and a positive result will require further tests of all five samples separately.
The state government’s effort to ramp up surveillance came after it received flak from the opposition, which accused it of trying to “hush up” the actual COVID-19 situation in the state by not conducting enough tests.
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Until April 20, only 5,469 samples were tested in the state, prompting the opposition parties to raise fingers at the state government’s strategy to battle the pandemic, leading to the high court’s intervention.
Amidst the political row, a team of doctors from SSKM Medical College and Hospital started collecting samples from the residents of a slum in Belgachia, a north Kolkata neighbourhood, around 12 noon on Monday.
To further expand the ambit of screening, the state government has also decided to go for pool tests along with the standard PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test, which is being currently done for samples of throat or nasal swab of symptomatic people.
“If you go through the data of big states, you will find the number of tests conducted in Bengal is far less than elsewhere. Despite the Centre providing testing kits in abundance, for reasons best known to the state government, they are conducting fewer tests,” West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh had recently said.
Left parties in the state even staged a protest on Saturday, demanding more tests. On the same day, in a nine-page order on a PIL, the high court sought a report from the state on how it has “accelerated” the testing process.
Meanwhile, the health department indirectly blamed the Centre for fewer tests being conducted in the state. In a series of tweets on Sunday, it alleged that the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had sent defective test kits to the state, thus forcing it to carry out multiple COVID-19 tests per patient.