Almost 11 percent of the people in the national capital who tested negative for COVID-19
In rapid antigen tests (RAT) but presented symptoms of the disease, it was found that they had been affected by the viral infection in the RT-PCR test between September 1 and November 7, according to official data.
Of the 56,862 symptomatic patients who were negative in rapid antigen tests, 32,903 were reexamined by RT-PCR and 3,524 of them were found COVID-19 positive, according to data shared by health authorities in response to an RTI query submitted by a PTI informant.
To effectively stop the spread of coronavirus infection, the Ministry of Health of the Union had asked in September all the states and territories of the Union to obligatorily re-analyze all symptomatic cases found COVID-19 negative in rapid antigen tests by RT-PCR so that no positive cases are missed.
For Delhi, the RT-PCR case positivity rate, which is considered the gold standard for COVID-19 detection, was 20.97 percent in September, while it was only 4.77 percent when it comes to rapid antigen testing, the RTI response said.
In October, the positivity rates for reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and rapid antigen testing were 16.76 percent and 4.58 percent, respectively. Between November 1 and 7, the rapid antigen positivity rate was 8.16 percent, while for RT-PCR it was 27.2 percent.
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