On Monday, the Health Ministry said that the coronavirus symptoms are not evident in around 80% of the infected cases. This new revelation stresses the importance of maintaining social distancing in this lockdown condition.
It is even said that one should try to maintain distance within the family to minimize the risks of spreading the virus.
Although it is not possible to test every individual, the health ministry and the ICMR together have made adequate provisions to test suspected asymptomatic cases.
These are people who have travel history or have come in contact with some infected individual but are yet to show symptoms.
The protocol also covers people who have mild-flu like symptoms or patients with SAR illness.
Lav Agarwal, the joint secretary of the health ministry, said “Based on the worldwide analysis, 80% of coronavirus patients are asymptomatic or show mild symptoms.
Around 15% turn into severe cases and 5% turn into critical cases.” It was also made clear that it is not mandatory for a non-serious patient to be asymptomatic.
The government also said that it is highly unlikely that a large number of asymptomatic cases do not need any medical assistance.
But, there are limitations to the testing methods and this should be kept in mind. Commenting on this, Dr. R R Gangakhedkar of ICMR said that the RT-PCR tests had higher chances of giving correct results when the symptoms are evident.
He further said that as of now the testing strategy adopted by India doesn’t have any warranty. In an earlier TV interview, Dr. Gangakhedkar expressed his concerns about the asymptomatic patients.
Where he also acknowledged the fact that there are scientific limitations to economically determine such asymptomatic cases.
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The only way as of now is by gathering information from the infected person about his recent contact history.
Moreover, he said, the RT-PCR tests that are conducted work better when the infected person is closer to showing any symptoms.
And the chances of the tests giving positive results in such scenarios increases drastically.
This is the fundamental limitation of such tests, but work is being done to improve it.
However, on a positive note, he also said that India has been quick in responding to the current pandemic situation.
An early lockdown declared by the government has helped control the rise in the number of positive cases. When compared to other countries, India is in a far better position when it comes to the number of reported deaths from COVID.
Keeping in mind the fact that India has the second-largest population in the world.
