SMIMER gets ICMR nod for Covid testing, to test 800 a day

TNN | Apr 13, 2020, 05:20 IST

Bleaching agents being sprayed in Surat’s housing colonies, societies

Surat: SMIMER hospital run by the Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) got the nod from Indian Council of Medical Research’s (ICMR) to test Covid-19 samples.
Municipal commissioner Banchhanidhi Pani said this will further enhance city’s testing capacity.
“The infrastructure for testing capacity is being set up and training of medical staff is under way. We have started mass testing in the city and we plan to increase our testing numbers. We have collected 1,428 samples from mass sampling, of which six people have tested positive. We want to increase our testing capacity to 800 per day in the coming days,” Pani said.
He said that 17 fever clinics (mobile vans) are on the field in different parts of the city to check people’s health. “We are following up cases of acute respiratory infections (ARI) and influenza-like illness so that they do not get infected with Covid-19,” he said.
“We have barricaded 172 societies or labour colonies in different parts of the city,” the municipal commissioner added.
Meanwhile, three persons including a domestic help residing at the EWS housing colony at Panas in Vesu tested positive on Sunday. The domestic help identified as Lata Javre, 45, tested positive after her sample was taken at the Panas health centre during ARI surveillance. The tracing of her contacts revealed that she was working as a domestic help in a house in Vesu where the employer had returned from Italy on February 22. However, the employer had earlier tested negative.
The other two positive cases are Shahrukh Pathan, 24, a resident of Azad Chowk in Limbayat and Vipul Mavani, 34, a resident of Vallabhnagar in Varachha.
Deputy municipal commissioner (health and hospital), Dr Ashish Naik said, “It is surprising that all the three patients who tested positive were detected during the ARI surveillance.”
Meanwhile, six people suffering from suspected symptoms of the deadly virus were admitted in the New Civil Hospital’s isolation ward on Sunday. The samples of all the patients have been sent for laboratory testing.