Chennai: Tamilnadu government has started pool testing for Covid-19 diagnosis in areas with 2-5 per cent positivity rate.
Pool testing is a method of testing samples of up to five individuals as one (pool). If the pool tests negative, all the samples in the pool are considered negative.
As pr the guidelines of ICMR, if the sample pool tests positive, all samples in the pool must be tested separately by RT-PCR. Areas with more than 5 per cent positivity, health workers who were in direct contact with patients and known contacts of patients are not to be tested in this method.
It was earlier alleged that there was a delay of up to three days in getting the results and in some cases they had to wait nearly five days. On the other hand, officials blamed overload of samples.