VIJAYAWADA: With increase in suspected cases of coronavirus, the State government as part of its measures to contain and prevent the spread of COVID-19, had decided to increase the combined capacity of the Virology Research and Diagnostic Laboratories (VRDLs) to test 1,000 samples per day.
The VRDLs are available at SVIMS, Tirupati, Siddhartha Medical College in Vijayawada and at Government General Hospitals at Kakinada and Anantapur.The State government is proposing to set up four more labs at the government medical colleges in Kadapa and Guntur and at Andhra Medical College in Visakhapatnam.
Special Chief Secretary (Health) KS Jawahar Reddy, in a GO issued on Tuesday, directed the principals of medical colleges where the labs are already operating or will be set up to engage the required manpower in coordination with heads of department of microbiology for the next six months. These appointments can done through walk-in-interviews. For this, the government had released an amount of `5 lakh to each of the seven medical college labs for purchasing lab consumables and other safety utilities like personal protective equipment and others.
“The principals shall ensure that the labs work on 24X7 basis with appropriate shifts,’’ the GO read.
The government said that any shortage of equipment or consumables and manpower shall be informed in advance to the CEO, Dr YSR Aarogyasri Health Care Trust, who is the State nodal officer of VRDL.
The Director of Medical Education was asked to depute research scientists, research assistants and lab technicians available in other medical colleges, where VRDLs are not available as of now, to VRDLs in Vizag, Kakinada, Vijayawada, Guntur, Anantapur and Kadapa districts for temporary period or till the temporary recruitment is done.