4,000 daily target: For 2nd day, fewer samples collected

NOIDA/GHAZIABAD: The Noida health department continued with its testing drive for the second consecutive day, but collected fewer samples on Friday.

While Noida had collected 3,638 samples on the first day, it sent 3,206 samples for testing on Friday. The state government has set a target of testing 4,000 samples daily for the next 10 days for both Noida and Ghaziabad. The drive is being conducted in all six districts under the Meerut division.
During Friday’s drive, health officials in Noida conducted 1,685 tests with the rapid antigen method. Just two tests were conducted with the TrueNat machine.
Officials said the machine faced technical issues on Friday evening and stopped working after the first two tests. The health department also conducted 1,519 tests using the RT-PCR method on Friday, about 500 more than the given target.
The antigen tests resulted in 52 positive cases.
“The testing has been appropriate and officials are making efforts to conduct maximum tests in a day. While the number of antigen tests was less, RT-PCR tests that were conducted on Friday were about 150% of the given target. We will be increasing this number on Saturday,” said Suhas LY, the Noida district magistrate.
Sources said the medical staff were finding it difficult to conduct over 600-700 antigen tests in any of the districts as the procedure is time and temperature sensitive. This is why none of the districts where the drive is going on has been able to meet the target of 4,000 tests in the past two days.
The drive is supposed to include 3,000 antigen and 1,000 RT-PCR tests. The districts where the drive is being conducted are part of NCR and have contributed the maximum number of active cases in the state.
Ghaziabad, according to sources, conducted 4,034 tests using the RT-PCR and rapid antigen methods on Friday. So far, 28,616 tests have been conducted in the district.
Meanwhile, Meerut divisional commissioner Anita Meshram, who held a meeting on Friday on Ghaziabad’s preparedness in its Covid fight, directed the health department to increase the number of ventilator beds by around 50.
At present, there are 20 such beds in Santosh Hospital and eight in the District Combined Hospital.
To tackle the increasing number of Covid patients in the district, the health department on Friday started a 400-bed Covid care hospital at SRM University in Modinagar. Officials said that with the enhanced testing drive, the number of cases will surge in the district over the next few days.
The UP government has approved an RT-PCR lab for Ghaziabad. Sources said the health department was planning to set up this lab at the District Combined Hospital in Sanjay Nagar.
“Once this lab becomes operational, 500-600 tests can be done here daily,” the chief medical officer, Dr NK Gupta, said.