India on Friday decided to change testing criteria for COVID-19 to include all pneumonia cases, regardless of travel or contact history.
This comes after it faced repeated criticism for testing only symptomatic patients with travel or contact history, and symptomatic health workers with contact history.
In an advisory to hospitals, the government said: “No suspected COVID-19 patient should be turned away from any hospital and the admission of any such patient should be notified to NCDC (National Centre for Disease Control) or IDSP (Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme) immediately.”
“Similarly, all pneumonia patients must also be notified to NCDC or IDSP so that they can be tested for COVID-19. Hospitals to ensure social distancing in their premises,” it added.
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Earlier, as part of sentinel surveillance, only random samples of pneumonia cases were being tested. A senior Health Ministry official confirmed that the testing protocol has been changed.
According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) guidelines on COVID-19 testing, asymptomatic direct and high-risk contacts of a confirmed case should be tested once between day 5 and day 14 of coming in his/her contact.
On Friday, India recorded the highest single-day jump of 63 new cases. Now the total number of positive cases in India climbed to 258, including 219 Indian nationals and 39 foreigners. While 23 have recovered so far, four have died.