Citizens above 70 years of age can be tested without prescription: BMC

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Tuesday announced that citizens above the age of 70 irrespective of being symptomatic or not can get tested without

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Tuesday announced that citizens above the age of 70 irrespective of being symptomatic or not can get tested without a prescription, and that citizens can avail testing by private laboratories using e-prescriptions. The BMC decided this in order to ramp up testing and contain the spread of the coronavirus.

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The BMC also said it has decided to procure one lakh rapid antigen tests, a day after the government allowed it, under its “Mission Universal Testing”.

According to BMC, the procurement of rapid antigen kits will enable around 2,000 to 2,500 additional tests daily.

Currently, BMC is testing between 3,500 and 5,000 tests daily, however, with this decision, it expects to conduct an additional 2,000 to 2,500 more tests.

The rapid antigen kits, called Standard Q Covid-19 Ag detection, provides results in only half-an-hour, which will help decide the further course of treatment for a serious patient at the earliest. It will also be used to know the prevalence of the pandemic among masses in hotspots and in western and eastern suburbs, where currently the growth rate is higher comparatively.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, the BMC said, “While efforts to prevent coronavirus infection in Mumbai are succeeding, more aggressive measures are being taken without any hesitation and as a part of ‘Mission Universal Testing’. The BMC has decided to procure one lakh antigen testing kits that gives results in just half an hour. Corporate houses and private companies have also been advised to test their employees by purchasing rapid testing kits, as per the recent approval of the government.”

In the context of procuring rapid antigen kits, the BMC statement added, “The procured kits will be used in all civic and government hospitals as well as treatment centres. This will speed the process of preventing infection by testing suspected cases immediately. We have also requested 35 large private hospitals in the Mumbai municipal corporation area to purchase and use these government -approved antigen test kits.”

The decision was taken by municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal, in a video conference called along with senior BMC officials. A BMC official who attended the meeting said, “This decision was in a way taken to conduct more aggressive testing. It is a decision to curb the spread considering we plan to open up gradually after more relaxations in existing lockdown norms are announced by the state government.”

Meanwhile, the state health department on Monday had said, patients with severe coronavirus symptoms and comorbidities, and pregnant women, can be tested using rapid antigen testing kits by the municipal corporations and councils.