Ghaziabad: The country may be looking to ramp up testing but in
Ghaziabad, extensive testing by the district health department has invited criticism from the state government. Sources said that during a video conference with state officials on Saturday, a senior official of the state health department rebuked his district counterparts for conducting “too
many antigen tests”.
This remark came when the district officials asked the state government to supply more
antigen kits that were needed to meet the target of 6,000
tests per day set by the state-deputed nodal officer for Ghaziabad, Senthil Pandian C, in the last week of September.
Following Pandian’s directive, the health department had significantly ramped up the testing in Ghaziabad and conducted an average of 4,100 antigen tests and over 1,200
RT-PCR tests in the first week of October. However, without getting the necessary replenishment from the state government, the health department started facing shortage of antigen kits and reduced the testing through this method to below 2,000.
Pointing at a disparity between the orders from the various state officials, the state health official’s recent comment also means that the daily test target will be reset. A senior health official said they would not do more than 3,100 tests per day as directed by the state government with a focus on RT-PCR method. “We now plan to do around 1,500 tests through RT-PCR, which is a gold standard of
Covid testing. At the same time, we will limit antigen to 2,000 tests only,” the official added.
The district health department also wrote to the director of Uttar Pradesh’s communicable and vector-borne diseases department to provide more antigen kits to meet the daily target of Covid tests. Officials said in order to meet the previous target of 6,000 daily Covid, 4,200 were required to be done using antigen kits and the remaining of 1,200 using RT-PCR method.
According to sources in the department, the district has no stock of antigen kits for around past one week and officials are making arrangements on a day-to-day basis either from Meerut or Lucknow. On Monday,
too, the department did not have stock for the following day and had to send a vehicle to Lucknow to acquire kits.
Even in September, the department was given only 60,000 kits for the entire month, but due to the raised target, they were exhausted before the they were expected to, an official shared.
This crisis had led the district officials to bring up the shortage of kits at the meeting with the state officials.
According to official data, a total of 3,92,756 tests have been done in Ghaziabad, out of which 2,32,574 have been done through antigen method, and 1,60,182 through RT-PCR method. A total of 81,019 tests have been done this month alone.