Delhi government has ordered all laboratories to give reports within 24 hours after collecting samples from COVID-19 suspects. It has been found that few private laboratories were taking 10 to 15 days to give the reports.

On Friday, health minister Satyendar Jain said that if there is a delay because of any reason, then strict action will be taken against them after 48 hours.

Testing undertakes more significance as Delhi has started seeing a huge spike in the number of coronavirus cases. On Thursday with 448 positive cases, it witnessed the highest one-day spurt.

Currently, the Indian Council of Medical Research has expanded the list of private laboratories which are performing real time RT-PCR tests for COVID-19 from 8 to 13. All these laboratories are instructed to follow the guidelines issued by the government for proper tracking and monitoring of all the suspected cases getting tested across the city.

The samples collected by the chief district medical officer, coronavirus designated hospitals, coronavirus health and isolation centres, and testing centres are sent to the private laboratories.

The private laboratories are paid from the laboratories funds released by the Centre under National Health Mission to Delhi State Health Mission. A private laboratory gets Rs 4,500 for collecting and testing samples and Rs 3,500 for testing samples collected by government facilities, whereas a government facility gets Rs 2,200 for collection and testing.

Among the 13 private laboratories, the one laboratory for North and North West districts can test 4,000 samples in a day. Two laboratories in Central district have a combined capacity to test almost 180 samples daily, one lab for New Delhi can test almost 200 samples. Another labs each for North East, South, South West, and one for both East and Shahdara districts, and two for South East. Three approved labs are for West district.

The government has already stated that the collection of samples shouldn’t go beyond more than 10% of a private laboratory’s declared capacity.

Source: ET Healthworld