Covid 19 update: Govt testing strategy focuses on speed
The government’s strategy to scale up testing for the coronavirus disease hinges on the procurement of automatic RNA extraction platforms, corralling existing RT-PCR machines from institutes across the country and working on in 24-hour shifts, a recent study has outlined. In the first week of April, ICMR announced its intention of gradually increasing the testing capacity to 100,000 tests daily. The paper details short and medium- term measures that can increase daily testing capacity in public-sector laboratories and facilities to 100,000-120,000 samples but adds that the most effective interventions could take until the middle of May or the first week of June to fully operationalise. The main measures proposed are redeployment of 42 manual RT-PCR machines from other research units, procurement of kits that can do the screening and confirmation tests in one run, operationalising high-throughput automated platforms that can conduct 140 tests a day, decentralising the laboratory network, utilising machines used for tuberculosis diagnosis and procurement of automatic RNA extraction machines. “Installation and/or operationalization of automated RNA extraction platforms supported by requisite extraction kits…could increase testing capacity by 1.5-2 times within the same operating hours,” noted the scientists.
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