West Bengal test numbers rise after talks between government and NICED

Ajanta Chakraborty & Sumati Yengkhom | TNN | Updated: Apr 14, 2020, 11:48 IST

Picture used for representational purpose only

KOLKATA: The Bengal government has started sending more samples to ICMR-NICED from Sunday for Covid-19 tests. The numbers rose to 60 on Sunday against 47 samples sent by the state for testing in last three days. The spike in figures comes after NICED Kolkata director Shanta Dutta expressed concern over “less samples” coming to NICED for tests and spoke to health department officials. “Health department officials said they will be sending us more samples. We received 60 samples on Sunday. This will be scaled up further.” Dutta said, “At present we have 27,000 test kits.” The NICED director said 7,500 testing kits have been given to the Bengal till now.
NICED, which was initially the only testing facility in Bengal, had been receiving 80-90 samples daily for testing. Last week, however, the samples being sent for testing dropped sharply. Last Wednesday, only nine samples were sent to NICED whereas 70 were sent to School of Tropical Medicine and 90 to SSKM hospital. Dutta said, “There is a big drop and we are not even reaching the 20-sample mark per day. Number of samples being sent is determined by the state, so if they send more samples, we can test more. I think sample collection has not been as per recommendation. So, number of tests being done in Bengal is also less.”

Asked if government prefers sending samples to state-run testing labs that have become operational, Dutta said, “This is the regional Virus Research Diagnostic Lab (VRDL), so our infrastructure is bigger. In fact, people in other testing centres have been trained by us so they are now able to do testing themselves.” NICED has a capacity to test 250 samples a day, more than SSKM and SPM together.
A state officer said, “Initially, NICED was the only laboratory here. Even after SSKM facility was set up, all private and district hospitals were advised to get their samples tested from NICED. Now SPM is also functional. Bulk of suspect cases are now in state hospitals and these reports are being sent to state testing units. Private testing labs are also operational and hence the bulk of samples sent by private facilities to NICED has also reduced.” The officer hinted, “NICED had initially refused to test some samples claiming they were asymptomatic. This could have created some confusion.”