Staff Reporter :
After bureaucratic tangles of several months, the government finally has permitted antigen-based rapid testing for Covid-19 at the government hospitals.
The health ministry said it in a notification, uploaded in its website, on Sunday. The notification said that the antigen-based testing has been permitted in all government health care centers, district hospitals, government PCR laboratories and all health institutes as per the proposal of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) and in accordance to the interim guideline of the World Health Organization (WHO).
The notification was signed by Bilkis Begum, Deputy Secretary of the Health Service Division of the Health Ministry.
“We have issued the circular allowing antigen based rapid testing at government healthcare centers,” Bilkis Begum said journalists.
However, the guideline for the expansion of the Covid-19 laboratories has to be followed once it is finalised.
On July 5, the DGHS had written to the Health Ministry to allow antigen-based rapid testing for Covid-19.
The National Technical Advisory Committee on Covid-19 also recommended it for several times.
According to the DGHS proposal, the antigen tests would be carried out on patients with symptoms. If anyone is found positive, the patient would be isolated.
But if anyone is found negative in the antigen tests, they would be tested again by RT-PCR or GeneXpert machine for confirmation, DGHS officials said.
