The Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) on Sunday started its drive to conduct the rapid antigen tests for Covid-19 in housing complexes by sending a team to Surjakiran, a complex in north Calcutta’s Paikpara.
The civic body had on Saturday announced that it would conduct antigen tests for free at housing complexes if at least 20 residents in each were willing to be tested.
Sixty-two residents of Surjakiran, on Umakanta Sen Lane, underwent the test. All were negative, a CMC official said.
Residents of the complex requested the CMC to conduct the tests a few days back. On Friday, the CMC informed them that a team would visit their complex Sunday.
Residents of Surjakiran queue up for rapid antigen tests. Sanat Kumar Sinha
“After the CMC responded to our requests, we spread the message around. Sixty-two of the 125-odd residents underwent the test,” said Amitabha Panda, the secretary of the residents’ welfare association of Surjakiran.
The antigen test can detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, in a person’s nasopharyngeal swab sample. The result of an antigen test comes in 30 to 40 minutes, compared to one or two days it takes for the result of the more confirmatory RT-PCR test to arrive.
For the RT-PCR test, a person’s nasopharyngeal as well as oropharyngeal swab samples are collected.
The rapid test is known to throw up many false negatives, which means that someone who
tests negative in the test could actually be infected by the virus. The guidelines for the rapid antigen test issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said a symptomatic person testing negative should undergo an RT-PCR test.
An asymptomatic person who tests negative in the antigen tests should be considered uninfected, the guidelines said. Someone who tests positive need not undergo further tests and is considered Covid positive.
Despite its deficiency, the rapid tests have been approved because they give results in 30 minutes and help in faster isolation of infected people, said a CMC doctor.
Panda, of Surjakiran, said none of the residents had to undergo an RT-PCR test.
Santanu Sen, a past national president of the Indian Medical Association and a member of the CMC’s Covid core team, said the authorities were trying to take testing to the doorsteps to increase the number of tests.
“More and more tests is our strategy,” he said. “If someone tests negative in the antigen tests but has symptoms of Covid-19, we will collect her/his samples for the RT-PCR test.”
The CMC had on Saturday said that residents would have to provide an air-conditioned (AC) room if they wanted the civic body to send a testing team to their housing complex.
The AC room is needed for the personal protective equipment -clad medical technologists to work comfortably. Panda said the samples were collected in the office room of the residents’ welfare association.
