Maha’s concern: people found corona positive at home are not reporting to health department

In this regard, the Maharashtra Health Department has written to all district and civic body officials to monitor the sale of home testing kits. They are also being asked that such patients should report the infection to the health authorities.

The letter, written by Dr Pradeep Vyas, additional chief secretary of the state’s public health department, has asked the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to sensitize chemists and pharmaceuticals, who go on to self-report about their infections. Will connect with customers who buy test kits. authority.

“It is expected that all the COVID-19 positive tests done through Rapid Antigen Test Kits or Home Test Kits are reported to the authorities. But it seems that a large number of tests are done through these kits. Coronavirus positive cases have been diagnosed which have not been reported by the concerned authorities and such persons appear to be in home isolation,” the letter said.

It has also been said in the letter that people should give a positive report of Kovid to the authorities at the earliest. It said that as per the genome sequencing results, around 70 per cent of the cases are of the delta strain.

“Rapid antigen tests generally do not differentiate between delta and omicron variants. It may therefore be that many of these home isolated COVID-19 patients may require hospital care (especially with delta strains and co-morbidities). ones) and there may be sudden stress on our health infrastructure,” Dr Vyas said in the letter.

He asked the officials to take the help of the FDA and monitor the sale of such self-testing kits to know that these kits are being used extensively in the geographical areas. Following the directions, SB Patil, Joint Commissioner, FDA (Pune Division), issued a notification asking all retail as well as wholesale chemists and pharmacists in Pune to keep a record of customers purchasing home test kits. “It is important to keep all the details like name, phone number, address and description of the kit of the customer purchasing the kit. All such records will be checked by the drug inspector,” the FDA notification said.