Doctors, nurses, paramedics, and health-care staff in direct contact with confirmed or potential COVID-19 patients will be given priority while conducting rapid antibody tests to identify community transmission of the disease and herd immunity in the population in the State.
A senior health official told The Hindu on Monday that training for the staff was expected to begin soon.
Blood samples
Right now, reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests are being carried out to detect COVID-19 infection. Nasal or throat swabs of suspected patients are taken and results take around five hours. In rapid antibody testing, blood samples of suspected patients are used. One has to clean fingers with an alcohol swab and use the lancet provided for finger-pricks. It takes around 15-30 minutes to get the result. According to sources, one lakh antibody detection kits will be used for the purpose. The first priority group is further divided into health-care personnel who have directly handled patients confirmed positive for the infection using RT-PCR-based confirmatory tests and those who do not deal with such patients. The second category is government or associated functionaries with maximum public contact, such as policemen on enforcement duty, field-level health workers, personnel deployed by the Local Self Government Department, and anganwadi workers. This category also includes persons working in ration shops, those involved in delivering food and grocery, and people running community kitchens. The third category includes people in home quarantine and the fourth category is those aged above 60.
Sero-surveillance teams will be prepared for each district whose members will visit each of these persons at their homes and collect samples for testing.
District Collectors shall be in charge of the implementation with regard to logistics and sample collection and the Additional Director of Health Services (Public Health) and district surveillance officers will take care of the technical aspects related to sample collection, testing, and record keeping.
The process of validation of the rapid antibody tests involves using these kits in patients who have already been confirmed to have the infection using the RT-PCR and are at various stages of the illness as well as on persons who can be considered to be at high risk of contracting or having contracted the infection from the confirmed patients.
