Faridabad lab scales down testingcapacity after staffers get infected

It currently tests 30 samples as against 500-650 per day earlier

Catering to three districts of Rewari, Mahendragarh and Faridabad in Haryana, the COVID-19 lab at ESIC Medical College and Hospital here has been forced to scale down its testing capacity drastically after more than half of its staff members tested positive for the deadly virus a week ago.

One of the two government labs in Faridabad, it earlier tested 500-650 samples per day on an average, but now the figure has come down to around 30.

Chief co-ordinator of the laboratory, Anil Pandey, said one of the lab technicians tested positive in the last week of May after his father, running a fruit shop in Delhi, contracted the virus. However, the father-son duo was asymptomatic. Soon, another technician developed symptoms and was found positive for COVID-19. “We then decided to collect and test the samples of the entire staff on June 4 and as feared, 10 of them were found positive,” said Dr. Pandey, also the registrar-academic ESIC Medical College and Hospital.

The hospital was forced to keep its lab operations shut for a day, but the rest of the staff worked overtime to clear the backlog of the samples on Sunday.

Dr. Pandey said they now test samples of only those suffering with critical illness, pregnant women and ones in the ICU. “The samples earlier sent to us are not directed to private labs and the other government lab in Faridabad,” he said. The lab at ESIC also carried out the quantitative analysis of the samples and reported the virus load unlike most of the other labs, he added.

He, however, hopes to increase the sample intake from Jnue 15, with a new team of four-five lab technicians and a scientist set to take the charge. “It may still take us another two weeks to reach full capacity,” said Dr. Pandey.

He rued that emergency services, such as COVID-19 labs, did not have reserve teams to ensure the operations were not hampered. “You can run routine services without a reserve team, but not the emergency services. The Central government must look into this, especially when cases are on the rise,” said Dr. Pandey.