TMI Bureau
New Delhi/ Port Blair,
13 April: The Andaman and Nicobar administration has been ‘pool testing’ the
samples of suspected coronavirus patients to reduce the number of test kits
used, in view of the acute shortage of kits across the country.
They have been
conducting these Covid-19 tests for the past ten days and according to
government sources, the union territory is the first to do so in India.
The process involves
testing multiple swab samples in a single test. If the combined sample tests
positive for coronavirus, the samples are then tested individually to determine
who has the infection. This reduces the number of test kits utilised, compared
to the testing of individual samples.
“Five samples per
testing kit are used. So, less than 25 kits are being used for testing 100
samples,” a government official told agencies.
The government sources
also indicated that the method has been approved by the Indian Council of
Medical Research (ICMR) and with several states running out of test kits, the
rest of the country is reportedly going to follow suit.
Cost-effective way of
testing
Over 886 tests have
been conducted by the administration in Andaman and Nicobar, which has a
population of approximately four lakh people as per 2011 census.
In a tweet Friday,
Chetan Sanghi, Chief Secretary of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands said that
one-fourth of test kits are being used by pooling samples leading to more tests
on an average in the union territory.
A study by researchers
at the Texas A&M University, Centre for Disease Dynamics, Economics and
Policy (CDDEP) and Princeton University in the US had assessed the feasibility
of pooled real-time Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR)
testing. The RT-PCR test is used to determine whether an individual has
contracted Covid-19.
The study revealed
that pooling test samples is cost-effective and can determine an estimation of
the prevalence of the infection, especially in countries with limited
resources.
11 confirmed coronavirus
cases in Andaman and Nicobar
The Andaman and
Nicobar Islands are home to five endangered indigeneous tribes and were one of
the first to stop the entry of non-residents and outsiders on 24 March, to curb
the spread of the virus.
The union territory
had confirmed 11 cases of coronavirus, nine of whom had participated in the
Tablighi Jamaat’s event in Delhi last month.
When compared to other
island nations like Maldives and Malta, Andaman and Nicobar has the least
cases. Maldives has reported 19 cases while Malta has 350 confirmed cases of
coronavirus.
Following the Tablighi
Jamaat development, intense contact tracing was carried out by the authorities.
Additionally, people who had allegedly attended the Jamaat event on two flights
to the Andamans were also isolated and most of them were tested.
Ten
patients have recovered from the infection and will be shifted from hospitals
to institutional quarantine for two weeks. Till Monday, only one active case of
Covid-19 was confirmed in the islands.
No comments:
Post a Comment