NEW DELHI: The official COVID-19 cases detected in the country might be much higher than the actual registered count as the testing rates are much lower despite a sharp spike in the cases, led by the new JN.1 subvariant in over three weeks.
Though the centre has issued an advisory to states and union territories to step up testing, keeping in mind the festivities and New Year celebrations as COVID cases are seeing a spike, only a few states, like Kerala, have ramped up testing.
A survey has also shown that Covid-19 tests took a dip this year with only 18 per cent of people - especially those with severe symptoms - taking the tests. The survey - conducted from Nov 20 to Dec 18, showed that only one in nine people with Covid symptoms took the RT-PCR tests this year.
The reasons for not conducting the RT-PCR tests were many among the 24,000 surveyed in 303 districts.
The main reason for the survey conducted by Local Circles, India’s leading community social media platform, was reluctance as many found no point in taking the test as many treated themselves based on their symptoms and recovered; inconvenience, and the tests being expensive.
According to Krishna Prasad N C, a Kerala-based COVID data analyst, very few states publically share the number of COVID tests they conduct.
The surge in COVID-19 cases began on November 21 when India reported 23 fresh cases.
Since November 21, India has reported 5,606 cases and 30 deaths, of which 4,776 cases and 17 deaths have been reported from Kerala alone, he added.
“In Kerala, people voluntarily get themselves tested for Covid-19. That’s why the reporting of cases is high in Kerala,” he added.
According to Dr Rajeev Jayadevan, Co-Chairman of the National Indian Medical Association (IMA) COVID Task Force, the general public and doctors no longer request COVID tests for people with compatible symptoms. This leads to underestimates, he said.
There are many reasons for not taking the COVID tests, he said. This includes denial, the sense that COVID is no longer a threat, and a false belief by a good section of society that COVID has gone away.
“It is important to maintain clinical and genomic surveillance even in between successive waves as the virus is continuously making changes to escape human immune response, enabling it to infect large populations repeatedly,” Jayadevan told this paper.
According to Sachin Taparia, founder of LocalCircles, which conducted the survey, with the COVID JN.1 subvariant rising globally and being reported in India too, the risk of late identification in communities is high.
“The risk (of not taking the test) becomes high if the new JN.1 variant causes severe disease in some individuals, especially senior citizens or those with comorbidities. If that is observed, the government should consider testing all arriving passengers from countries with high caseloads and providing free COVID testing at multiple locations in every district,” he told this paper.
However, officials said, the government at the moment has no plans to make COVID testing mandatory at the airport.
India recorded 640 fresh cases on Friday, taking the country's COVID-19 tally to 4.50 crore. The death toll has touched 5,33,328 with one more fatality reported from Kerala, as per ministry data. A total of 22 JN.1 Covid variant cases were reported in India till December 21, officials said.
