VIJAYAWADA: With the State government ramping up the number of covid-19 tests, the Health and Medical department is in the process of increasing its testing kits.
According to senior officials, the State has over 6,000 viral transport medium (VTM) kits, used to carefully transport the swabs to the laboratories.
Though the officials mostly tested foreign returnees and their contacts till last week, the number of tests shot up significantly after the issue of Tablighi Jamat surfaced.
“We have sufficient VTMs kits to conduct the tests. There are over 6,000 VTMs and more are being sourced. We also expect that the number of tests will come down as we have traced all the Jamat attendees and their contacts. So, we are adequate on that front,” a senior officer at the State Command Control Centre told TNIE.
Not to take any chances, the Health Department, in coordination with the Industries Department, has ordered for 25,000 more kits including VTMs. “Even if we have to increase testing significantly, we will be comfortable to do so,” the official added.
For the record, ever since the pandemic outbreak, the State government, which has been doing only targeted testing, has done just over 1,800 tests till Friday.
Targeted testing involves taking samples of all symptomatic people who have international travel history in the last 14 days, those who had a history of travel to covid-19 clusters and hotspots and primary and secondary contacts of the positive cases.
As of Friday, the State is equipped to test 600-700 samples a day at six laboratories across AP. A lab functions in three shifts with eight hours for each shift. While six hours are required for completing the tests, one hour each is needed for mandatory cleaning and information management.
Testing times
6,000 viral transport medium (VTM) kits used to carefully transport the swabs to the laboratories are available in State
5,000 more kits including VTMs were ordered by health department, in coordination with industries department