People in flood relief camps to be tested for Covid-19 in Bihar

Bihar, grappling with Covid-19 and floods, has decided to test those staying in its flood relief camps for Sars CoV-2 virus, which causes the coronavirus disease.

The tests will be done through rapid antigen detection (RAD) kit, which gives out instant result, though experts say it has a fair possibility of giving false negative result.

“Testing people before getting them into our relief camps will allow us to segregate the infected people from healthy ones, so that we can shift them to other camps, which will also function as Covid-19 isolation camp for them. This will minimise the risk of spread of infection,” said Pratyaya Amrit, Bihar’s principal secretary of departments of health and disaster management.

The initiative will also help Bihar ramp up testing of samples. Bihar scaled up its daily testing rate almost five times in the last one month. As against 7,291 tests done on July 1, Bihar clocked 35,619 tests on August 1. Efforts were on to increase it further, said officials.

The state reported 2,762 Covid-19 cases on Sunday, taking its overall case tally to 57,270, with 322 fatalities so far.

The state government has set up 19 relief camps across four worst-hit districts by floods. Gopalganj had 11 relief camps, East Champaran two, Samastipur five and one in Khagaria districts.

A total of 26,734 people, displaced by floods, were residing in these camps, as of Sunday, according to information provided by Bihar’s disaster management department (DMD).

The national and state disaster response force have evacuated 4,03,269 in the flood-hit areas of Bihar so far.

A communique, quoting DMD additional secretary M Ramachandrudu said that 2 lakh families, affected by floods, had been paid ₹6,000 each as gratuitous relief so far, costing the state exchequer ₹120 crore. The money, he said, had been paid directly into the bank accounts of the beneficiaries.

A population of around 50 lakh in 14 out of Bihar’s 38 districts is affected by floods in 113 blocks and 1,059 panchayats.

Sitamarhi, Sheohar, Supaul, Kishanganj, Darbhanga, Muzaffarpur, Gopalganj, East Champaran, West Champaran, Khagaria, Saran, Samastipur, Siwan and Madhubani are the districts affected by floods in Bihar.