BENGALURU: District hospitals at Gadag, Vijayapura and Tumakuru have received approval from the Centre for CBNAAT Covid-19 laboratories. With these additions, Karnataka now has 26 labs and the capability to conduct 5,000 tests per day.
This increase is significant in Karnataka’s fight against coronavirus considering that the state had just two labs in the beginning of February and the capability of testing a few hundreds. Of the 26 labs, 15 are Real-time Polymerase Chain Reaction labs, three Cartridgebased Nucleic Acid Amplification Test and 8 are private labs.
Karnataka Medical Education Minister K Sudhakar said, “Another 30 will be added and the total number of labs will reach 60 by the end of the month. This will further enhance and nearly double the testing capacity.” He said, from Day 1, Karnataka has deployed 4T Strategy — Testing, Tracking, Tracing and Treatment — to effectively contain and fight the virus. “The increase in number of labs and testing capacity is the part of that strategy for conducting large numbers of tests,” he added.