Telangana Health Minister Eatala Rajender on Monday announced that the state will cap COVID-19 treatment tariff in private hospitals across the state. As per the new pricing tariff, the price for a COVID-19 test is capped at Rs 2200; patients would be charged Rs 4,000 per day if they are admitted to an isolation ward and Rs 7500 per day for patients who are not on ventilator but admitted to the Intensive Care Unit. Those patients who are on ventilator support will be charged Rs 9000 per day. Eatala said that they are also fixing a cap on antiviral drugs, which would be charged separately.
Till now, Telangana was not allowing private labs to test for coronavirus. However, on Sunday, Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar said that private hospitals and labs would be allowed to test samples. According to the bureaucrat, this decision was taken to instill confidence amongst the people, as several have expressed apprehensions over poor numbers of testing by the government. Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao had also announced that the government will conduct 50,000 COVID tests across Hyderabad, Rangareddy and other adjoining districts over the next 10 days.
Addressing the media on Monday, minister Eatala Rajender asked private hospitals not to test asymptomatic patients.
The private hospitals shall provide details of COVID-19 patients to the government so that the municipal authorities could contain the spread of COVID-19 by tracing and isolating the infected.
The health minister insisted that they will not go for rapid testing and continue with reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rt pcr) test, due to the high rate of inaccuracy in rapid testing. The minister said that they will do mass testing in Hyderabad and other containment zones in the state. “In places like Jiyaguda, Balapur and Talab Katta where there are more cases, we will do mass testing,” Eatala said.
In a meeting attended by the Health Minister, Chief Secretary and Director of Public Health G Srinivasa Rao, it was decided that there should be more testing, tracing and isolation in Hyderabad. The minister said that they will do surveillance on each household in Hyderabad, to prevent the spread of the deadly disease.
On Sunday, the state recorded 237 COVID-19 cases out of which 195 of them were from Hyderabad.