The State to increase the number of testing again

Picture used for representational purpose only

Bengaluru: Even though the state’s daily Covid cases have been decreasing, experts, on observing the situation closely, suggested that the curve may not flatten very soon.

They say this because the tests conducted in several districts have fallen significantly. They are of the view that the curve will only flatten when the positivity rate becomes low and testing is high. It has been analysed that the respect decline in Covid cases is due to a decrease in the number of daily testing and infection data across districts.

Over the past few days, the number of RT PCR tests conducted has gone down by around 30,000. The state conducted around 1.5 lakh tests between the last week of April and the first week of May, but it began to fall to 1.2 lakh tests per day from May 9. Due to this, the number of positive cases being reported had decreased too. Cases have dropped from around 24,000 on May 5 to 16,000 on May 12 in Bengaluru alone.

This comes just when experts have suggested to ramp up testing so that early detection and treatment of the virus could be possible.

The shortage of testing kits remains one of the reasons for the decline in testing. Some private labs claim that since Sunday, the health department had withdrawn login access for staff on the issue of discrepancies in details of RT PCR tests conducted.

Every lab must give the details of the person being tested along with his/her aadhar card and contact numbers on the website. An SRF number is then created which becomes the reference number of the patient. With this, the government keeps track of those who are tested positive. A doctor in charge of a private lab in Bengaluru said, “In our lab, 10 staff had login access but for the past four days only three had access. As a result, there was a significant decline in testing.”

However, on Wednesday, after questions were raised, the government started to restore the login credentials of staff. A staff member at a diagnostic centre said, “Lat night, two or four staff whose login access was suspended was restored.”

The Karnataka government, in a statement submitted to the high court, has said that it possesses around 10.5 lakh RAT kits which will be sufficient for the next seven days. An aggregate of 50,000 RAT kits is being supplied each day. Also, it has decided to attain 37 lakh RT PCR kits in addition to this.