“Health Ministry urges States/UTs to Mandatorily retest all Symptomatic Negative Cases of Rapid Antigen Tests through RT-PCR,” the Union Health Ministry tweeted.

In this regard, the Union Health Ministry and ICMR have jointly written to all the States/UTs and urged them to ensure that the all symptomatic negative cases of RAT are mandatorily retested using the RT-PCR test. This is necessary to ensure that such symptomatic negative cases do not remain untested and do not spread the disease among their contacts. This will also ensure early detection and isolation/hospitalization of such false negatives.

It has also been reiterated in the joint letter that while the RAT is being used to increase access and availability of testing in the field, RT-PCR remains the gold standard of COVID tests.

Meanwhile, India today saw a record single-day spike of 95,735 infections infections and 1,172 fatalities taking India’s COVID-19 caseload past 44 lakh and death toll to 75,062, while recoveries surged to 34,71,783 on Thursday, according to the Union Health Ministry.

The total cases mounted to 44,65,863, the ministry data updated at 8 am showed. The fatality rate has dropped to 1.68 per cent while the recovery rate was at 77.74 per cent. There are 9,19,018 active cases in the country which comprise 20.58 per cent of the total caseload, the data stated.