Alarmed at the huge spike in Covid-19 cases each passing day, a worried Centre on Thursday asked the States to mandatorily re-test all symptomatic coronavirus negative cases of rapid antigen tests through RT-PCR test, considered a gold standard for detecting the infection.
The advisory comes as India saw a record single-day spike of nearly 1 lakh infections on Thursday.
“Health Ministry urges States/UTs to Mandatorily retest all Symptomatic Negative Cases of Rapid Antigen Tests through RT-PCR,” the Union Health Ministry tweeted.
“Union Health Ministry has noted that in some large States, symptomatic
negative cases tested by Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) are not being followed up by RT-PCr testing.
“The guidelines of ICMR as well as the Ministry clearly state that the two specific categories of persons — all symptomatic (fever or cough or breathlessness) negative cases of Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) and asymptomatic negative cases of RAT that develop symptoms within 2 to 3 days of being tested negative — must necessarily be retested through RT-PCR tests,” said a senior official from the Ministry.
In this regard, the Ministry and ICMR have jointly written to all the States/UTs and urged them to ensure that the all symptomatic negative cases of RAT are mandatorily retested using the RT-PCR test.
“This is necessary to ensure that such symptomatic negative cases do not remain untested and do not spread the disease among their contacts. This will also ensure early detection and isolation/hospitalization of such false negatives,” said an official from the Ministry.
It has also been reiterated in the joint letter that while the RAT is being used to increase access and availability of testing in the field, RT-PCR remains the gold standard of Covid tests.
Meanwhile, India saw a record single-day spike of 95,735 infections and 1,172 fatalities taking India’s Covid-19 caseload past 44 lakh and death toll to 75,062, while recoveries surged to 34,71,783 on Thursday, according to the Ministry.