BENGALURU: Kidwai Memorial Institute  of Oncology said it completed testing of 1 lakh samples 
on Thursday. Dr C Ramachandra said their Covid-19 lab, which started functioning three-and-a-half months back, is the first in the state to reach this mark.

“The lab can test around 3,000 samples a day, and we want to scale this up to 6,000-7,000 samples a day. For that, we need to hire data entry operators, lab technicians and buy computers,” Dr Ramachandra said. The BBMP will visit the institute to inspect how they can increase manpower and infrastructure.

The government rate for RT-PCR testing of referred samples is Rs 2,000 at other labs, but Kidwai charges only Rs 1,550 per sample. This lab conducts pool testing, wherein one RT-PCR machine tests 384 samples, and each of the three other machines test 94 at a go.

However, pool testing at other labs has come down, said Dr C N Manjunath, nodal officer for Covid testing in Karnataka. “In pooling of samples,  five suspected ones are put into one liquid testing pool. 
If it tests negative, then all samples are negative. If the result is positive, each of the samples have to be tested individually. Due to cases going up, pool testing has reduced as the samples will have to be tested a second time,” he said, who is also the director of Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research.