On average, over 1,000 tested per day through the six days of the latest drive, more than 50,000 antigen tests done in a month
Health workers testing a resident of Navi Mumbai
Navi Mumbai's door-to-door testing has turned out to be a gamechanger with 69 housing societies having been covered in six days. Of the 6,999 residents got tested, 325 returned positive.
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Antigen tests, which were introduced in mid-July, crossed the 50,000 mark within 30 days.
Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) officials believe that aggressive testing is helping to keep tabs on the pandemic and its spread.
NMMC started door-to-door antigen tests on August 10 to intensify testing in Containment Zones.
"We started antigen testing across our 22 centres. But many people were either reluctant or had some difficulty with the prospect of getting tested. So we came up with door-to-door testing with the help of six trucks to first educate people and 34 vans to conduct the tests," said Abhijeet Bangar, NMMC commissioner.
Also Read: COVID-19: Amid shortage of Tocilizumab drug in Mumbai, experts question
'Don't want loopholes'
"Those who have some 'COVID like' symptoms but are showing negative in antigen test results are getting RT-PCR tests done as we don't want these small loopholes in testing and tracing," Bangar said.
Of the 51,323 antigen tests done, 6,629 people returned positive for COVID-19.
"Apart from Antigen tests, RT-PCR tests are crucial, having utmost accuracy. The NMMC's own lab started testing from August 4 and within 12 days, we have tested 3,257 samples till August 16, out of which 825 returned positive," said another NMMC official.
"As per our observation, the Test Positivity Rate is coming down as we are testing more people and covering as much as area possible," he added.
As of August 18, NMMC has had 21,473 COVID-19 cases, of which 17,530, 82%, patients have recovered, 3,428 people are under treatment and 515 have succumbed.
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