Amid rising cases of coronavirus in the national Capital, Director General of Health Services (DGHS) issued an order with a new set of guidelines for Covid -19 testing.
The new guideline stated that all symptomatic individuals with a history of international travel in the last 14 days, those who are contacts of laboratory-confirmed cases, healthcare workers, or frontline workers in containment areas will be tested.
All patients of severe acute respiratory infection (SARI), direct and high-risk contacts (diabetic, hypertension, cancer patient and senior citizen) of a confirmed case to be tested once between day 5 and day 10 of coming into contact with a confirmed case. SARI case is defined as "one with acute respiratory infection with fever more than 38C and cough and require hospitalization".
All symptomatic, ILI within hotspots/containment zones; all hospitalized patients who develop ILI symptoms; all symptomatic ILI among returnees and migrants within seven days of illness will be tested for covid-19. No emergency procedure (including deliveries) should be delayed for lack of test. However, samples can be sent for testing if indicated as above (1-8) simultaneously. LI case is defined as "one with acute respiratory infection with fever more than 38C and cough". All testing in the above categories is recommended by real time RT-PCR test only.
The new guideline says that migrants or returnees from other places will only be tested if they are symptomatic, within 7 days of illness. The focus in the current guideline has been given to symptomatic cases amid reports about shortage of beds in Delhi hospitals.
Earlier on Sunday, the Delhi government issued a new standard operating procedure (SOP) for handling the bodies of Covid-19 patients. It stated that no coronavirus test will be conducted if patient after death.
The new guidelines mentioned three requirements to identify an individual as a Covid-19 fatality ' the person tested positive for Covid-19 before death, the positive test was based on a sample taken when he/she was alive and the person was admitted to hospital with severe symptoms of Covid-19 or doctors categorised him/her as a Covid-19 suspect. However, it mentioned: 'no sample for COVID-19 test will be taken of the dead body'.
