BENGALURU: As per data shared by the State Covid-19 war room, around 26,903 corona samples are still not processed and await testing in 57 RT-PCR private and government labs across the State.
The statistics from July 4 shows that some labs are testing beyond their capacity, while others are below their target.Jawaid Akhtar, Additional Chief Secretary, Health and Family Welfare Department, said, “Some district labs have less capacity, at times testing machines go out of order or one of the lab technicians tests positive. In such cases, the lab has to be shut down and samples redirected to another lab.”
Nodal officer for Covid-19 testing in the State, Dr C N Manjunath who is also the director of Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research, said, “In many labs, the data entry operators, lab technicians and microbiologists have tested positive and the labs have had to be shut down. This has been the case with Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute and NIMHANS labs and another lab in Mangaluru.
This is one of the important reasons for the backlog. We are planning to have a team of backup technicians trained in NIMHANS, so that they can go to such affected labs and carry out sample testing.”
Pankaj Kumar Pandey, Health Commissioner, said, “We are trying to increase the capacity of labs. We are doing reallocation of samples among labs as well to reduce the waiting period for testing to