Testing centres overloaded as govt mulls more tests

SHILLONG: Amidst growing cases of the COVID-19 pandemic, the government is laying emphasis on ramping up testing facilities, but Meghalaya seems to be falling behind in the testing front with just three RT-PCR testing labs.
The three government-owned testing facilities in the state – NEIGRIHMS, Pasteur Institute and Tura Civil Hospital – are over-burdened with the number of samples increasing with each passing day leading to unnecessary delays in announcing the results.
So far, a total of 30,571 tests have been conducted in the state with majority of the tests – 26,458 – being handled by NEIGRIHMS.
2226 tests have been conducted at Pasteur Institute while Tura Civil Hospital has conducted 1887 tests. As on Thursday, results of 330 tests at NEIGRIHMS were awaited while the number of pending results at both Pasteur Institute and Tura Civil Hospital was an identical 110.
Admitting to the delay in announcing the test results, NEIGRIHMS officiating director, Dr P Bhattacharya said that the institute was overburdened with tests. He suggested that the state government should come up with more testing facilities to ease the load on NEIGRIHMS.
“The government has so many facilities like district hospitals and they should work for 24 hours day instead of working from 9 am to 4 pm,” he said.
NEIGRIHMS announces results of around 400 samples each day. The institute had faced an intermittent shortage of man power but the problem has been addressed, Dr Bhattacharya said.
“We usually have a backlog of maximum 100 samples sometimes due to overheating of the machine and repetition of tests but we complete the same by the next day,” he added.
An official looking after the testing facilities at Pasteur Institute admitted that they face several challenges as the staff, lab and even the disease is new but they were working to overcome those obstacles.
The institute has been conducting around 200 tests per day and officials there are planning to increase the daily capacity to 400.
Meanwhile, Commissioner and Secretary, Health, P Sampath Kumar informed that the government is contemplating to rope in microbiologists from Assam to boost the state’s testing capacity.
“We are exploring this possibility through channels of medical fraternity,” he said in response to a query by The Shillong Times.