‘Focused testing’ starts in Ghaziabad ahead of Holi

Ghaziabad: Following the directions of the Uttar Pradesh government, Ghaziabad started “focused testing” of different groups on Saturday

Ghaziabad: Following the directions of the Uttar Pradesh government, Ghaziabad started “focused testing” of different groups on Saturday. This comes in the view of Holi.

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According to the Ghaziabad health department officials, of the daily testing target, they will devote 50% of the 3,500 rapid antigen tests and 40% of the 1,700 RT-PCR tests to “focused testing”.

“We have a daily target of conducting around 3,500 antigen tests and another 1,700 RT-PCR tests. The current daily achievement is lower than the daily target as many do not come for testing nowadays. However, we have been directed that 50% rapid antigen tests and 40% RT-PCR tests, of our daily testing target, will now be devoted to focused testing,” said Dr NK Gupta, chief medical officer (CMO), Ghaziabad.

The drive will be carried out every day till March 27, and will cover labourers at construction sites, street vendors, school and college students, domestic travellers, workers at pan and cigarette shops, bus stands, sweets shops, liquor shops, malls, markets and shops selling items for Holi celebrations, among others.

According to the district health department data, Ghaziabad conducted a daily average of 2,437 tests in January, an average of 1,971 tests per day in February, and an average of 2,174 tests per day till March 9.

“We have been asked to conduct tests on travellers at railway stations and bus stands in case our daily focused testing target is not achieved. We already have 22 teams conducting the tests, and many of these teams will be devoted to focused testing,” Dr Gupta added.

The district also saw focused testing before and after Diwali last year.

According to the official data, the district has a total of 26,863 Covid cases till March 12, and the figure includes 26,661 discharged, 102 deaths and 100 active cases. Recently, 21 Covid-19 positive cases were reported at the central public works department’s (CPWD’s) national academy at Kamala Nehru Nagar in Ghaziabad.

Meanwhile, considering the large number of assistant executive engineers getting infected, the health officials have now decided to go for genome sequencing to find the Covid variant.

“Since a large number of cases was reported at the academy, we will take up genome testing of 10% of the samples and these will be sent to the Delhi laboratory. It will help us find out whether the patients are infected with the Sars-Cov-2 or the latest variant, VUI-202012/01. We are yet to get the test reports of two staffers and as many departmental stores, and one fruit shop where the patients went for shopping,” Dr Gupta added.

In December 2020, genome sequencing was done on 231 travellers from the UK, but none tested positive for the new variant.