BMC to test high-risk contacts of positive patients after 5 days

People wait for BEST buses at Dadar on Tuesday despite the lockdown. Pic/Ashish Raje

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has revised the guidelines to test asymptomatic high-risk contacts of positive COVID-19 cases. Just two days back, the BMC decided to not test high-risk contacts of positive cases on priority, but to consider first those who show symptoms. But after facing a backlash about this, the BMC has now instructed that asymptomatic high-risk cases will be taken up for testing after five days of quarantine, instead of immediately.

Explaining this, a civic official said, "The primary symptoms of illness don't appear immediately in many infected persons. Asymptomatic cases have often been tested almost immediately, but it has also been observed that in the first five days after the infection, 'False Negatives' usually appear. These are people actually affected but their medical tests come out 'negative.' Such tests are referred to medically as 'False Negative Test'."

It is because of this pattern, that the BMC has decided to conduct a medical test of high-risk contacts of positive patients, after a minimum of 5 days of quarantine. While the earlier instructions did not give any clarity on asymptomatic high-risk contacts and only emphasised on prioritising symptomatic high-risk contacts, the new guidelines have kept a buffer of 5 days to ensure results asymptomatic contacts are not false and treatment is provided.

There are currently over 5,000 high-risk contacts in the city and the tracing of new detected patient's high-risk contacts is in process. At least 27,400 tests have taken place in the city, which includes tests done at private laboratories.

'No community transmission'

On Thursday, the BMC, through a press release said that Mumbai does not have community transmission. To ensure screenings in the vicinity of containment zones where positive cases were found, the BMC has set up fever clinics. There are 17 fever clinics in all. An initial screening of 3,585 people was done on Thursday for COVID-19. Out of these, samples of 912 were sent to laboratories for examination and the BMC has claimed that just five were found to be positive. These five persons were in close contact with those who had travel history.

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