Inform us Covid-19 results before patients, health dept tells pvt labs

Coimbatore: The public health department has instructed those private laboratories that conduct Covid test in the city to first upload the results on ICMR portal, inform the health department or Coimbatore Corporation before revealing the result to patients. It has also asked the laboratories to inform the patients two hours later after informing the health department.
These instructions were given to the laboratories at a meeting conducted by the public health department with private laboratories on Monday.
The laboratories have also been instructed to follow pool sampling for large-scale samples from industries.
The meeting was headed by deputy director Dr G Ramesh Kumar. He instructed laboratories to update patients on their results only several hours after instructing the health department. “This is to avoid them landing up at hospitals and Covid care centres on their own vehicles, endangering multiple people,” Dr Ramesh Kumar said. “If we have this two hour or three-hour advantage, we will have time to arrange their transport to the institution," he added.
Laboratories have also been instructed to test private individuals only as per ICMR guidelines, which includes those with international travel, contact with a confirmed case, have symptoms including fever and breathing difficulties. “We have also asked them to start doing pooled sampling, where they will test five samples together. This way we will save on reagent and the industry will save on costs,” Dr Ramesh Kumar said. “It will cost Rs 1,000 a person. If it tests positive, we can then do more largescale testing in the area,” he added.
The deputy director said that the new ICMR guidelines also instructs them to test only 10 times the daily number of cases. “For example, if we are undergoing a phase where we see 300 cases a day, they have asked us to test only 3,000 swabs. But even when we were recording only 250 cases, we were collecting 4,500 samples a day including those given at private laboratories, leading to us having a positivity rate of only 3.3%,” he said. “They are hinting that our positivity rate should be 10% during a surge. The point is to ensure we are not wasting reagent on patients who don't need it,” he added.
However, this move is expected to stress out many people who may opt for a private laboratory only to get their results promptly and within a time span. Any delay in the time, may make them start panicking.