The Union Health Ministry on Saturday issued an updated advisory for COVID-19 testing simplifying the process and giving more flexibility to the State authorities to facilitate enhanced ease of testing.
According to the updated advisory Covid-19 testing can be done ”on-demand” without a prescription.
“A totally new section has been added in the Advisory on “Testing on Demand” which for all practical purposes does away with prescription by a registered medical practitioner although state governments have the freedom to decide on simplified modalities,” the Ministry of Health said in a statement.
The move comes after a prod by the Delhi high court that asked why people who show no symptoms of the disease – which can be a large proportion of Covid-19 patients – cannot get a test.
The rule until now required people to either have flu-like symptoms or come in close contact with an infected person, following which a doctor could issue a prescription for a test.
Earlier Aditya Thackrey, Maharashtra’s Cabinet Minister had decided to open up testing to any individual in the city without prescription/self-attestation.
The ICMR also stressed that no emergency procedure (including deliveries) should be delayed for lack of tests, and pregnant women should not be referred for a lack of testing facility.
Further, the existing recommendations related to testing for COVID-19 have been extended, elaborated and divided into four parts — routine surveillance in containment zones and screening at points of entry, routine surveillance in non-containment areas, hospital settings and testing on demand — and choice of test (RT-PCR, TrueNat or CBNAAT and rapid antigen tests) in order of priority has been listed.