The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Tuesday said that the diagnostic machines used for testing drug-resistant tuberculosis can now be used for screening and confirmation of coronavirus cases.
To enhance the testing capacity, the ICMR has issued revised guidelines for TrueNat testing for COVID-19.
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“TrueNat system is now a comprehensive assay for screening and confirmation of COVID-19 cases,” the guidelines stated.
According to the guidelines, all samples of suspect COVID-19 should be first tested by the E gene screening assay.
All negatives are to be considered as true negatives.
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All positive samples should be subjected to confirmation by another step.
The second step that should be conducted is RdRp gene confirmatory assay, the ICMR added.
All samples that test positive by this assay must be considered as true positive.
“No further RT-PCR based confirmation is required for samples that are positive after step 2 of the assay,” the revised guidelines stated.
All positive and negative results must be reported to the ICMR portal in real time manner.
A total of 25, 12,388 samples have been tested by the ICMR till 9 am on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the total number of coronavirus cases in the country reached 1, 06,750 on Wednesday.
The death toll due to COVID-19 cases in the country is 3303 so far and the number of active cases is 61,149.