Is India Running Too Few Tests?

In the light of limited testing protocol charted out by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare for novel coronavirus (Covid-19), a Maharashtra-based physician faced a strange dilemma while caring for a patient with severe multi-organ failure and pneumonia in an intensive care unit of a rural hospital.

- Maitri Porecha

SP Kalantri, Professor of Medicine at Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences in Wardha said, “We are unable to figure out who the villain is, bacteria or viruses (in this case). The regional lab refused to test his sample for Covid-19 because he lacked a travel history.” Kalantri wonders if the testing criteria for Covid-19 are too restrictive.

Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), head and Secretary, Department of Health Research Balram Bhargava, emphatically says that only those persons who have a travel history and those that have come in contact with them and then gone on to develop symptoms of cough, cold, fever, breathlessness and so on will be tested for Covid-19. Currently India has activated 67 laboratories for conducting the first test, and 51 of those are equipped to conduct confirmatory tests on samples, which is not even one lab per district. India has 732 districts.

India has reported 107 cases so far, with two deaths.