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Ghaziabad plans RT-PCR test lab to enhance testing; district records biggest single day spike with 65 new cases
Ghaziabad: The Ghaziabad health department is now scouting for a suitable building to set up a reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test lab
Ghaziabad: The Ghaziabad health department is now scouting for a suitable building to set up a reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test lab in order to enhance the Covid-19 testing capabilities in the district.
According to district health officials, the issue of a testing laboratory for Ghaziabad district had cropped up in a video conference meeting, which was chaired by the Uttar Pradesh chief minister.
Till Sunday, Ghaziabad could collect only 15,578 samples for Covid-19 test, which is not even 1% of its estimated population of 42 lakh. The officials said that during his visit in April, Sudhir Garg, UP principal secretary (forest), had directed the district administration to prepare a proposal for setting up of a testing lab.
“We are now searching for a suitable building where the RT-PCR lab can come up. During a recent video conferencing, chief minister directed for a need of a testing lab at Ghaziabad considering the high number of cases and time consumed for receiving the test reports. We will soon submit a proposal to Ghaziabad district magistrate and it will later be sent to the state government,” said Dr NK Gupta, chief medical officer.
Presently, the Ghaziabad health department has achieved only about 350 samples per day. The district has reported a steep rise in the number of Covid-19 positive cases as well as deaths due to the virus.
Recently, the UP government-appointed nodal officers had visited the district and focussed primarily on the rising number of death cases. They have also directed officials to study every death case and find out reasons for spike in fatalities.
“According to our assessment, 23 deaths have taken place in Meerut. Of them, about 70% cases were referred from Ghaziabad while rest of the patients got admitted on their own. Prima facie, as per our assessment, there could be delay in identification of influenza-like illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory infection (SARI). This led to late detection of Covid-19 complications. The delay in identifying Covid-19 cases at an early stage can also be attributed to patients who fail to approach health care facilities when symptoms arrive,” CMO said.
Therefore, the district health department has decided to speed up and enhance the surveillance systems through 260 teams. However, the officials said that they would require about 1,000-1,200 teams to cater to the existing population comprehensively.
The aim of surveillance teams is to early detect the ILI and SARI patients so that they can be administered immediate treatment before anyone goes to complicated state, the officials said.
Meanwhile, the Covid-19 cases in the district refused to show a decline.
The health department officials on Sunday said that 65 more Covid-19 cases were added to the tally of 853, taking the total positive cases to 918 in the district. On Sunday, four more deaths were reported, which took the tally of fatalities to 46.
“The 65 new cases have come from different localities in Ghaziabad and this is the highest single day spike till date. Four deaths have also taken place. One death has taken place in Ghaziabad, while three deaths which took place in Meerut earlier, were also added to the tally,” CMO added.
According to the officials, the list of 65 new cases include five cases from the Women’s Hospital while two cases have also come in from the Dasna district jail.
“The five positive cases from our hospital are staff nurses and ANMs who come from Khoda, Delhi and Noida. None of the doctors have tested positive so far,” said Dr Deepa Tyagi, chief medical superintendent of Women’s Hospital.
