One in every four cases linked to Nizamuddin event: Govt

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 3

While the circle of Covid-19 infections continues to widen at a worrisome pace across India, the government today said it has not yet decided whether to go in for large-scale community testing as some countries such as South Korea and Germany have done. Cases today reached 2,547 and deaths 62, both data points nearly doubling since Monday when the national caseload was 1,071 and mortality figures were 29.

The average rate of rise in daily infections for the week starting Monday crossed 26 per cent today after remaining stable at 11 to 16 per cent for a long time through previous weeks. This indicated a reversal of initial gains India had made at flattening the disease curve through lockdown.

Meanwhile, although WHO Regional Director for Southeast Asia Poonam Khetarpal, at a virtual meeting with health ministers of the region, today called for active case detection, the government said conducting unnecessary tests for confidence building alone in times of shortage of test kits might not be the right strategy.

The Health Ministry didn’t rule out review of test sampling guidelines but said there was no decision on the issue yet.

“Under the existing guidelines, we are doing sampling in hotspots and in these hotspots we will also test cases of severe acute respiratory illness and influenza-like illness. If we feel the need, we will revise Covid-19 test sampling criteria but so far there has been no decision in the matter,” said Health Ministry spokesperson Lav Agarwal.

The Nizamuddin hotspot cluster associated with the Tablighi Jamaat event now contributes a whopping 467 positive cases to the national caseload. This means one in every four confirmed cases in India now is linked to the Jamaat event.

On testing, some expansion to existing strategy will be formalised on Saturday when the ICMR issues guidelines to allow states to conduct antibody (blood based) tests for Covid-19 on residents of hotspots such as Nizamuddin.

These guidelines will follow US FDA’s approval today to the first antibody Covid test that will look for immunity to the disease in people.

“The idea is to see if anyone in the hotspot has developed antibodies to fight the disease which is existing in the cluster,” an official said. Persons with antibodies to the virus causing Covid-19 could prove vital to vaccine research. But experts feel antibody tests would serve a limited purpose and draw government’s attention to WHO’s repeat advice of “more testing”.

India has constantly been questioned for low testing since its first case on January 30. While South Korea, which has effectively managed Covid-19, was conducting 80,000 tests a day on an average, India has so far done just 66,000 tests. “The highest single day testing was done only yesterday — 8,000 samples,” said ICMR.

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