Ensure those testing +ve on home kits report to authorities: Maha to officials

Expressing concern over the nonreporting of the coronavirus positive cases diagnosed using selftesting kits by people the Maharashtra health department has written to the district and civic officials to monitor the sale of such kits and ensure that patients report about their infection to the authoritiesDr Pradeep Vyas additional chief secretary of the state public health department gave these directions to all the municipal and divisional commissioners district collectors and chief executive officers of zilla parishads ZPs in a letter written on WednesdayIn the letter he also asked the Food and Drug Administration FDA to sensitise chemists and pharmacists so that they can educate customers buying these Covid19 selftesting kits to report about their infection to the authoritiesIt is expected that all Covid19 positive tests conducted through rapid antigen test kits or home test kits are reported to the authorities But it seems that there is a large number of coronavirus positive cases diagnosed through these kits that have not been reported to the authorities concerned and such persons appear to be in home isolation he said in the letterPeople should report positive test results found using the home kits to the district or civic authorities so that their health can be monitored he addedThe letter also said that as per the genome sequencing results about 70 per cent of the cases are of Delta strainRapid antigen tests generally do not distinguish between the Delta and Omicron variants So it may so happen that many of these home isolated Covid19 patients may need hospital care particularly those with Delta strain and comorbidities and suddenly there may be a stress on our health infrastructure Dr Vyas said in the letterHe also asked the officials to take help of the FDA and monitor the sale of such selftesting kits to know the geographical areas where these kits are being used on a large scaleChemists can also be educated so that they can inform the people purchasing such kits to report about the positive test results to the authorities concerned the letter addedFollowing the instructions joint commissioner of FDA Pune division S B Patil issued a notification asking all the retail as well as wholesale chemists and pharmacists in Pune to keep a record of the customers who buy the home test kitsIt is important to keep all the details such as name phone number address of the customer who buys a kit and also the particulars of the kit All such records will be checked by the drug inspectors the FDA notification saidThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever