Covid-19: Assam new testing SOP to ramp-up lab output, speed up tests

GUWAHATI: A new SOP by Assam has made pool testing of not more than five samples mandatory to ramp-up the output of the seven Covid-19 testing laboratories in the state as number of home-bound people arriving has made a quantum jump since the resumption of passenger trains and also because of samples being collected from community surveillance.
In view of emergent situation where timely processing of samples for COVID-19 is of paramount importance to save lives and to contain the spread of the disease, the SOP also has made it mandatory for the labs, all of which are government-run, to complete tests and declare results within 24 hours.
Samples will received by a laboratory in two batches – morning from screening/ quarantine centres and in afternoon from ILI/ SARI samples of community surveillance programme of the districts.
“The testing of the morning batch should be completed by evening of the same day and thereafter the testing of the afternoon batch will commence and be completed by next morning. No result results should be delayed beyond 24 hours,’ the SOP states.
A state control room comprising Dr AK Barman, Director of Medical Education and Dr Manoj Choudhury, additional Director of Medical Education will continually monitor the testing status of each laboratory, and take remedial steps on a real time basis.
“If required, DME will temporarily attach any medical faculty to the control room. The control room will take steps to increase testing capacity in the state which will include deployment of additional manpower etc,” the SOP said.
To streamline the testing procedure, the seven labs have been allotted demarcated feeder districts for each of them and “No laboratory will receive any sample from outside the allotted districts, without the specific permission of DME who too will grant such permission only in exceptional cases, as a last resort,” the SOP states.
Any sample beyond the testing capacity of a medical college hospital laboratory would be re-directed to Regional Medical Research Centre by Principal Secretary.
The SOP has outlined, “Pool testing is compulsory for all samples from 14/05/2020 onwards. Number of samples to be pooled will be dependent on tasting capacity and number of samples to be tested but number of samples to be pooled will not exceed five.”
But, in case of emergent need, number of pooled samples can be increased to 10 but with specific permission from DME. “Pooling of 10 samples will be allowed only in exceptional situation,” the SOP states.