E-Paper
Telangana caps price of testing, treatment
Hyderabad
Hyderabad
A day after announcing that private labs will be allowed to test for Covid-19 and corporate hospitals, permitted to treat Covid-19 patients, the Telangana government on Monday fixed a cap on the cost of diagnostic tests and treatment.
Telangana has joined the list of states that have instituted pricecaps on treatment for the coronavirus disease in private hospitals. State health minister Eatala Rajender told reporters that the private labs authorised by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in the state will not charge more than Rs 2,200 for the tests, although he recommended that they avoid testing asymptomatic individuals.
Similarly, the charges in private hospitals cannot exceed Rs 4,000 a day in normal wards, Rs 7,500 in Intensive Care Units (ICU) without ventilator and Rs 9,000 with ventilator support, he added.
However, private hospitals would be permitted to collect additional charges for anti-viral drugs when the patients are on ventilator. Some anti-viral injections could cost up to Rs 50,000, the minister explained.
Rajendar said tests will be done as per ICMR guidelines. And everyone who tests positive need not be hospitalised ; those with mild infections can stay in home quarantine, he added.
On Sunday, chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao said that in the following 10 days, the health department would conduct tests on 50,000 people in 30 assembly constituencies in and around the capital city.
As of Sunday, Telangana had 4974 cases of which 2312 are active; thus far, 185 people in the state have lost their lives to the viral disease.
The minister said the health department is establishing a link between private health care establishments and the government for sharing of information related to number of tests, positive and negative cases and number of persons who are admitted at private hospitals.
“The private hospitals will have to upload the information about the tests and treatment on the health department portal,” he said.
Rajendar said the government would not take up rapid testing but continue with reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test. Mass testing will be done in several parts of Hyderabad and other containment zones in the state which reported high number of cases.
Laboratories in the state have the capacity to conduct 4,000 tests a day; thus far, ICMR has approved nine public and 17 private labs in the state to conduct tests.
The department will do surveillance on each household in Hyderabad, to prevent the spread of the deadly disease, Rajendar said, adding that there are no plans to reimpose lockdown restrictions in the state.
