Should Asymptomatic People also get Tested for COVID-19? - WHO set Guidelines after New US Rule! - Report

The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Thursday, reiterated the guidelines for getting tested for the new novel coronavirus. These comments from the WHO has come after the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention restated their guidelines for testing.

"If you have been in close contact (within 6 feet) of a person with a COVID-19 infection for at least 15 minutes but do not have symptoms, you do not necessarily need a test unless you are a vulnerable individual or your health care provider or State or local public health officials recommend you take one,” the US CDC website reads. This was supported by the trump lead government. President Trump said that the US must reduce the number of testing and blamed the high number of testing for making it appear as though the country is managing the situation poorly.

Concerned and alarmed by this, the WHO said, “Our recommendations are to test suspect cases, and we have definitions for those. We have definitions of contacts, and who contacts are of confirmed cases, and make recommendations that contacts, if feasible, should be tested regardless of the development of symptoms.”

“The focus, though, is on those that do develop symptoms.”

Mike Rayan, head of WHO’s emergencies programme said, “It absorbs huge amounts of resources,” Ryan said. “So we need to focus on testing the right individuals, we need to focus on maximizing the testing in the clusters, and we need to focus on the quality of the testing, and the speed of the turnaround.”

Hence, immediate testing to ensure that the spread is under control has been reinforced as the focus point by the World Health Organisation.