In a written reply to a question, the health ministry on Wednesday said that currently there is no evidence to suggest an increase in the incidence of TB and HIV as a result of the pandemic.
The health ministry replied that from Jan 2020 to Aug 2020, 11, 76,164 TB notifications have been recorded. This number is lesser than the notification recorded during the same period last year. TB Notification from the same time period in the previous year was 16, 49,310.
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However, the government informed the house that several steps have been taken by National TB Elimination Programme (NTEP) to mitigate Covid-19 pandemic impact on TB Services.
Talking about AIDS, the government said that a decline has been noticed in the number of individuals attending HIV counselling and testing or screening centres during the Covid-19.
The government feels a lack of transport services and reduced mobility as the reason for this.
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During March to July 2020, around 1.40 crore HIV testing has been reported under the National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) facilities in comparison to 2.32 crore testing in March to July 2019.
As a result of a decrease in testing and screening, detection of new HIV cases has also reduced. During the period of March to July 2020, there have been around 41,400 HIV positive results at NACP facilities. The number was just double during the same period last year. There were 82,200 thousand HIV positive results in the corresponding months of 2019.