Nagpur: The five public labs — IGGMCH, GMCH, AIIMS, NEERI, and NU — are now working under immense pressure with samples rising exponentially within a week. The five labs on Sunday collectively performed RTPCR on over 3,100 samples, a jump of over 1,000 from February 15. At the same time, 1,705 rapid antigen tests (RAT) were also done.
Covid warriors in some labs have now started working in three shifts beyond 12am to ensure there are no backlogs. Sources say 6,000 to 7,000 samples are being received in 24 hours.
The need to have additional shifts was felt after NMC and other agencies started sending samples at any time. The five labs collectively have an approximate per day capacity of 3,600 RTPCR tests.
Just a week back, the labs would receive samples only once a day and staff had to work only in morning and afternoon shifts, officials said.
Some lab staff questioned the district and civic administration’s decision to perform RTPCR on each suspect. “Ideally, the swab collection centres must first use rapid antigen test (RAT) and then use RTPCR judiciously on persons showing symptoms but getting a negative RAT,” they said.
This flooding of samples has left the lab staff fatigued and stressed, officials say. Also, the large amount of samples has led to errors in entry real of time data.
In December, NMC had streamlined the distribution of samples and asked all collection centres to send samples as per the capacity of each lab. But, again the labs have started receiving more samples than the fixed limit.
The city is also now one lab short of its earlier capacity, as MAFSU lab has stopping Covid testing.
Civil surgeon Dr Devendra Paturkar didn’t answer TOI’s calls and messages. Municipal commissioner Radhakrishnan B said as of now there is nothing to worry. “Our testing capacity is much higher,” he said.
However, he didn’t comment when asked about burden on lab staff and stretching the capacity of testing machine.
Some lab officials said the administration must understand RTPCR is gold standard for a different reason, while need of the hour is to detect as many positive persons as possible in the community.
“Each round of RTPCR requires at least three hours to give the result. In one round two plates having 90 to 100 samples are processed. A 30 minute break has to be given to the machine or else it will break down. On Saturday, we had to process 12 plates which took 18 hours of work,” said a top official.
Official from another lab said the post-midnight working on samples is not recommended because it affects the quality of result. “But we are helpless. We have to deliver results the same day,” the official said, adding that right now this kind of load can be easily avoided by increasing RAT.