West Bengal: Two private hospitals to start testing samples from Monday

Sumati Yengkhom & Prithvijit Mitra | TNN | Apr 6, 2020, 07:20 IST

Representative image

KOLKATA: Two private hospitals — Tata Medical Centre (TMC) and Apollo Gleneagles Hospital — are set to flag off their Covid-19 sample testing laboratories on Monday. All private hospitals treating Covid-19 suspects will be sending their samples to these two laboratories. Each of these laboratories will be testing 30-40 samples everyday. So far, private hospitals had been sending their
samples to NICED and SSKM.
Tata Medical Centre that got the nod to test samples last Saturday will receive samples from 9 am to 5 pm. It will be delivering reports on the same day for samples received before 1pm. Reports of samples received later will be released next day. “We will receive samples from hospitals. Even though the state government has said that we will be receiving samples only from private hospitals, we will remain open to all hospitals as of now,” said a TMC spokesperson.
Even though a team of TMC doctors, nurses and other health staff is being trained to attend to Covid-19 patients and suspects, it will cater only to cancer patients admitted at the hospital.
With ICMR validating the use of rapid test kits for Covid-19, more centres could join the list leading to a much-needed jump in the number of samples tested everyday. “Once rapid test kits are allowed, which could happen very soon, hundred samples can be easily tested a day. This will allow mass screening of Covid-19 suspects while the more doubtful samples can go to the PCR labs which are already functioning,” said Peerless Hospital microbiologist Bhaskar Narayan Choudhury.
“We are ready to conduct tests and run an isolation centre. Since we deal with cancer patients who are severely immunosuppressed, it will be risky to throw open our isolation facility to external patients. So, it will be restricted to just our own patients in case they contract Covid-19,” said TMC director Mammen Chandy.
He added that since there has been a dip in the number of cancer patients due to restrictions on OPD, the hospital now has enough manpower at its disposal “who are adequately trained to provide infection-control treatment”. “As far as the infrastructure is concerned, everything from housekeeping to waste management is ready to roll,” said the Tata Medical official.
School of Tropical Medicine, too, has started testing samples and has enough kits to conduct 800 tests, Apollo Gleneagles has procured its kits .
At its isolation centre, TMC has set up six negative pressure isolation rooms for Covid-19 patients. Even though none has been admitted so far, TMC plans to add nine more isolation rooms once the lockdown is called off. “Since we treat only cancer patients who are immunosuppressed and have a greater risk of contracting the virus than other patients, we can’t risk taking in Covid-19 patients not suffering from cancer,” said an official.