Maharashtra: No pool testing in state as per new ICMR guidelines, says officials

Amid the rising cases of the coronavirus pandemic, the officials in Maharashtra said that they will not be able to do pool testing anywhere in the state as the positivity rate of the state stands at 5.7 per cent. This decision of the state comes after the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) issued an advisory for pool testing for COVID-19 in areas where the rate of positive cases was less than five per cent.

Earlier, the state government has sought permission from the Centre and the ICMR to allow pool testing, particularly in places like the Mumbai-MMR area that is a hotspot of India's coronavirus crisis. Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray and public health and family welfare minister Rajesh Tope have repeatedly said that the state would now go in for pool testing.  "We are going in for the new concept of pool testing," Tope said.  

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Maharashtra is one of the most hard-hit states due to the spread of COVID-19 in India. The city of Mumbai and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) continue to show an increase in the spread of the disease. Meanwhile, the spread of the disease has been controlled in cities like Nagpur and Pune.

To make Maharashtra a ‘zero-COVID-19’ zone, the Government of Maharashtra is planning on carrying out ‘pool testing’ in the state. This process helps in saving time and resources, particularly the COVID-19 testing kits, which are already low in number in the country. 

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The state government also claims that pool testing is a viable method in the present scenario as 61 per cent of the total cases in Maharashtra are in Mumbai, 10 per cent in MMR, 20 per cent in Pune and the remaining nine per cent in the rest of the state. This indicates that the spread of COVID-19 in Mumbai and MMR, although increasing, is concentrated. Thus, pool testing in these areas would be suitable, economical and time-saving.

Earlier, Uttar Pradesh has obtained clearance from the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) to start "pool testing" becoming the first in the country to attempt this method which aims at expediting the testing process for COVID-19. 

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What is pool testing?

Pool testing involves putting multiple swap samples together and testing them in a single real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test. A batch testing positive would indicate that everyone whose samples were in the batch needs to be tested individually. However, if a batch tests negative then everyone whose samples were in the batch is safe. According to reports, researchers from Israel have demonstrated that testing combined samples from up to 64 people for COVID-19 fastened the screening process and also brought down cost. 

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