Pool testing to begin soon in Chennai: Minister Vijayabaskar
As per report chennai, which has 14,997 active COVID-19 cases, has begun serosurvey as part of which healthcare professionals will directly collect blood samples from residents’ doorstep. According to the Commissioner, this will be completed in 10 days, during which all parts of the city will be covered. Random blood samples from 12,000 persons will be collected and studied for this purpose. minister of health and Family Welfare C Vijayabaskar on saturday announced that pooled testing for COVID-19 will begin soon, mainly to reduce the turnaround time of results.
In pooled testing, instead of testing each person individually, samples from five different individuals will be tested as a single unit by the RT-PCR method. If the test returns negative, all five in the pool are considered to have tested negative. Should the result return positive, then each member is tested individually. Twenty-one districts with 2-5% positivity rate have been identified for this purpose. Villupuram, tirunelveli, Trichy, coimbatore, salem, Erode, and Pudukkottai are among the 21 districts identified for pooled testing.
director of Public health and Preventive Medicine, in its order dated July 17, has informed all nodal officers in both government and private labs to implement pooled sample testing. The state presently has 111 COVID-19 testing centres, which include 56 government and 55 private centres. health Secretary J Radhakrishnan pointed out that with the number of samples being tested in districts increasing, pooled testing is being looked at as a solution. “The turnaround time for results is up to six days in some districts. So we are pushing for pooled testing,” he was quoted saying.