HYDERABAD: The special inspection on private labs across Telangana has thrown open a can of worms as the Director of Public Health issued a detailed note on how private labs flouted norms on multiple levels within just 10 days of operations.
These violations range from incorrect method of RTPCR which may have turned some negative samples into positive, not using PPE kits and poor quality control that may have cross-contaminated samples.
The inquiry panel comprises four teams of senior microbiologists and officers from the State Health Department who visited all the 16 private labs in the State.
The inquiry primarily hints that there are chances of several false-positive cases of coronavirus in present numbers as labs have done pool testing.
A major drawback of this, is that all the tests coupled together could reflect as all positive, even if the bunch has a few negatives without independent investigations.
The panel will now study this issue using special techniques to see how much of this issue may have occurred in the large number of cases reported in the last 10 days.
A main point to note among these discrepancies is the fact that tests recorded in ICMR portal, state portal and the records of the labs are different.
Thereby, a huge question mark hangs over the present reported numbers.
For instance, the data uploaded by all laboratories in ICMR portal is 9,577, 6,733 in the state portal and and in personal lab records the figure rises to 12,700.
As far as positive samples go, the ICMR portal says there are 2,076, state portal says 2,836 and lab records say 3,571.
The expert committee will conduct further inspections to study the problem in detail.
They also propose that senior microbiologists will check the amplification plots and other data in the RTPCR machines of private labs to check whether the reports are correct.
Stringent action will be taken against those found violating norms.