New machine to help Odisha in race against time to rule out community transmissions

Odisha aims to rule out community transmissions before the lockdown ends with widened testing for coronavirus.

Odisha on Saturday installed a machine to ramp up state’s existing testing capacity from about 400 per day to 1000 samples a day as the government aims to bring even asymptomatic cases into the ambit of coronavirus testing.

Odisha has obtained a machine that will help scale up its testing capacity to a thousand samples a day. (ANI Photo)

Odisha reported 50 positive cases of Covid-19, including one casualty and 12 recoveries till Friday night since March 15, when the first case in the state was reported. As per health department’s statistics, over 90 per cent of the cases are asymptomatic—without the symptoms of Coronavirus such as sore throat, high fever and diarrhea.

Director of National Health Mission in Odisha, Shalini Pandit said till now, the state was testing just about 400 samples a day, in three laboratories including Regional Medical Research Centre in Bhubaneswar. “With the installation of a Cobas 6800 machine, the second such machine in India, at least 600 additional samples can be tested using the PCR method, taking the total to more than 1000,” said Pandit. Till Friday night, Odisha had tested 3547 samples while Maharashtra had tested 32051, the highest in the country.

She, however, clarified that the increased sample testing may happen from Monday as the team was getting ready. “There is a particular style of mixing and extracting chemicals. The team is getting trained on it,” she said.

Officials said apart from testing people who had returned from abroad as well as those who had attended the religious congregation of Tablighi Jamaat last month, the government is doing random sampling for asymptomatic as well as symptomatic cases.

“We are bringing random people in containment zones as well as from outside the zones to sample collection centres opened in schools for collecting their nasal swabs. Before the lockdown ends, we want to be sure that there is zero community transmission of Covid-19. The frontline health workers who are going house to house are also being tested. For all positive cases, we are testing 40-60 people who came in contact with them on flights or trains. So far none of them have tested positive,” said Pandit.

Director of medical education, Dr CBK Mohanty said the state has sought two lakh testing kits, including rapid testing kits, to cover a large number of migrants who will return to the state after the lockdown ends. The antibody testing mechanism with 80-90 per cent accuracy would reduce the load on the State Government to screen and quarantine people.