10% symptomatic samples in Pune that test negative in RAT confirm positive in RT-PCR

Pune: As per the data compiled from the state health department, 10% of the symptomatic samples tested negative in rapid antigen tests (RAT) were later found to be positives

Pune: As per the data compiled from the state health department, 10% of the symptomatic samples tested negative in rapid antigen tests (RAT) were later found to be positives. Of the total tests conducted in Pune district, 38,533 had tested negative in RAT. As of June 5, 4.848 million tests were conducted and 22.7% tested positive. The district’s contact traced 12.92 contacts for every positive case while the state average is 15.03 contacts for each new positive case.

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The report states that 4,848,804 tests were conducted of which 1,102,987 or 22.7%tested positive and 3,745,817 (77.3%) tested negative. Pune’s record for tests per million is 413,895 and 94,151 tested positive per million. While the administration does rely on RAT tests to ensure early detection during super survey tests and also for emergency-like operations, RT-PCR is considered as the gold standard for testing. As of June 5, the district had 21,216 active cases of which 78.7% were asymptomatic, 12.4% were mild symptoms and 8.9% were critical patients.

The data states that Pune’s average contact tracing is lower than the state. While the district tested 3.53 high risk contacts and 9.4 low risk contacts for every positive case, the state average is 5.69 high risk contacts and 9.34 low risk contacts. Pune traced 1,003,824 or 98.2% of the contacts while 21,534 or 1.8% are pending. Of those traced, 3,621,725 are high risk contacts and 9,640,694 are low risk contacts.

Pune constitutes 17.6% of total positive cases of Maharashtra with a cumulative positive case count of 1,026,717 as of June 5. A total of 10,608 new cases were reported in this week as compared to 16,941 in the previous week.