E-Paper
Pool testing yet to start in Pune district; labs to increase testing capacity from 1k to 2k
To increase the testing capacity from the current 1,000 samples daily to about 2,000 samples per day, the district administration has instructed both private and government labs to increase their working capacity
Despite the state health minister declaring that the central health ministry has approved pool testing for Covid-19 samples, the district administration and the city labs are yet to take a call.
Dr Anand Nandapurkar, nodal officer for Covid-19 for Pune district said, “We have not yet started pool testing for Pune. However, in a meeting with the administration and the laboratory representatives and virologists, it was suggested that if better equipment could be purchased for government labs like automated RNA extractor then the sample testing time could be reduced from six hours to one hour.”
According to officials, although pool testing does increase the testing capacity by five times, it could also give false negatives if the viral load on the samples is low. To increase the testing capacity from the current 1,000 samples daily to about 2,000 samples per day, the district administration has instructed both private and government labs to increase their working capacity.
With regards to pool testing, the Indian Council of Medical Research’s (ICMR) advisory states that pooling of more than five samples is not recommended to avoid the effect of dilution which may lead to false negatives, especially in areas or population with positivity rates of more than five per cent for Covid-19, considering the higher possibility of missing positive samples with low viral load, except in research mode.
“The administration has also directed labs to increase their testing capacity marginally which cumulatively can double the testing rate for the city,” said Dr Nandapukar.
Currently, on an average, about 1,000 samples are being tested daily which is the maximum capacity for the 10 labs which test samples for Pune. The district administration has now directed the labs, both government and private, to increase the capacity to double the testing rate of the city from current 1,000 to 2,000.
The civic body recently started collection centres at the red zones to ease sample collection and test as many contacts as possible.
18,097 samples tested in the district
Till date about 18,097 samples have been tested in the district May 5. While the district is also recording a decline in the number of cases coming up daily, Pune city has shown a drastic fall in the number of cases in the past four days. As per the PMC health department, on May 1, there were 93 cases, on May 2 as many as 107 cases were reported and on May 3 there were 99 cases. On May 4, 61 cases were reported and May 5 there were 65 positive cases of Covid-19.
