PRINCE KUMAR
Ranchi, Jan 15: People in Jharkhand capital started taking baby steps towards self-reliance as far as testing for Covid positivity is concerned.
The situation came to the fore after a section of medical shop owners in the district said that the Covid-19 Antigen Self-Test kit is readily available and several Self -Test kits are being sold on a daily basis.
Azad Pharma medical shop owner said that about 50-60 kits are being sold on a daily basis and the kits are approved by the ICMR.
The situation has put district administration in trouble as they find it difficult to trace those who tested themselves and were found positive.
When the Home Isolation Tracking Cell In-charge, ADM Utkarsh Gupta was contacted for his comment on the tracing of Covid-19 infected persons in home isolation, he did not receive the call.
Nodal officer of Home Isolation Tracking Cell, SDM Ajay Saw said that it is impossible to track down the patients which have been tested positive by the self-test kit, until and unless they inform the district administration about their report.
“A dedicated team has been allowed the work for calling the patients in home isolation for three times during the period of being Covid positive,” Saw said.
On the issue that some persons are not receiving calls, he said that due to connectivity issues or their cell being unreachable when called by the team they would have missed the call.
On the trustworthiness of the self-test kit, Ajit Kumar of Sadar Hospital said that if the test kit is approved by ICMR then surely the test kit is reliable.
“However, there are shreds of evidence that sometimes the kit is unable to detect the virus during the early phase of the infection. If we have to categorize the test report among good, better and best then rapid antigens test will stand being good, TrueNat test being better and RT PCR test the best,” Kumar said.
