{"id":49984,"date":"2022-01-14T16:34:33","date_gmt":"2022-01-14T11:04:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kashmir.today\/covid-cases-in-kashmir-higher-than-reported-doctors-association\/"},"modified":"2022-01-14T16:34:33","modified_gmt":"2022-01-14T11:04:33","slug":"covid-cases-in-kashmir-higher-than-reported-doctors-association","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/?p=49984","title":{"rendered":"Covid cases in Kashmir higher than reported: Doctors Association"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Srinagar, Jan 14: <\/strong>With Omicron driven third Covid wave raging in Kashmir,\u201d Doctors Association Kashmir (DAK) on Friday said the actual number of Covid positive cases in the valley is higher than what is being reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe official count is an underestimate as many Covid cases go unreported,\u201d said DAK President and Influenza expert Dr Nisar ul Hassan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr Hassan said use of home test kits and rapid antigen test kits has seen a massive jump since the Omicron surge began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhile many people test positive by these kits, they do not report to the authorities,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cMany people also do not get tested worrying that they will be taken to the Covid camps,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The DAK President said even though RT-PCR test is the gold standard for detecting Covid-19 and its variants, a negative test does not exclude the possibility of infection as the test can miss more than 30 percent of positive cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe see many patients who test negative on RT-PCR test, but show CT features consistent with Covid-19, and they are not reported,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIndian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in its new guidelines has waived off testing requirement for many categories including contacts of confirmed Covid positive cases, unless they are in the high risk categories,\u201d said Dr Nisar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBesides, it has also exempted asymptomatic patients undergoing surgical or non-surgical invasive procedures including pregnant women hospitalized for delivery unless warranted or symptoms develop,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhen testing is curtailed, we won\u2019t know the exact burden of the disease in the community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>General Secretary DAK Dr Arshad Ali said accurate data is critically important for appropriate response which holds key to mitigate further disaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cTo deal with the problem, we must understand how bad it is,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Spokesperson DAK Dr Riyaz Ahmad Dagga said poor quality data equals poor decision which in turn leads to lost opportunity to improve population health in a crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWithout accurate tallies, response won\u2019t be enough to defeat the outbreak,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Srinagar, Jan 14: With Omicron driven third Covid wave raging in Kashmir,\u201d Doctors Association Kashmir (DAK) on Friday said the actual number of Covid positive cases in the valley is higher than what is being reported. \u201cThe official count is an underestimate as many Covid cases go unreported,\u201d said DAK President and Influenza expert Dr [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49764,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-union-territory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}