Assam boosts testing capacity, eyes over 10,000 tests a day

GUWAHATI: With the addition of the 8th government-run Covid-19 testing lab at Council of Scientific and Industrial Research's (CSIR) North East Institute of Science and Technology at Jorhat on Saturday and four more likely to be made operational soon, Assam plans to take it testing capability beyond 10,000 sample tests per day.

"Yesterday, we carried out 8000 tests, which is the highest number of single-day tests done so far in the state. We hope to achieve 10,000 tests per day in the next three to four days and even beyond that when we add more labs," Assam health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said.

He added that the the ninth lab would be started at the Institute of Advanced Study in Science & Technology in Guwahati, the 10th at Defence Research Laboratory (DRL) of DRDO at Tezpur, the 11th at Diphu Medical College and Hospital and the 12th will be the second lab being set up at the Guwahati Medical College and Hospital.

"We want to do more tests to identify and separate the Covid-19 positive people from the community. Our strategy is working fine," Sarma said. A month back, Assam's labs were conducting just about 500 tests per day.

Assam pipped Kerala in testing last Sunday

The other seven government-run labs for Real-Time RT PCR for COVID-19 in the state are at Gauhati Medical College, ICMR-Regional Medical Research Center at Dibrugarh, Jorhat Medical College, Silchar Medical College, Silchar, Fakkhruddin Ali Ahmed Medical College at Barpeta, Tezpur Medical College and Assam Medical College at Dibrugarh. In addition, one private lab, Ultracare Diagnostic Centre in Guwahati, has also been accredited by the ICMR.

After shifting from manual to automatic RNA extraction machines borrowed from various government agencies and universities to ramp up testing capacity, Assam surpassed Kerala in the number of samples tested for Covid-19 last Sunday by more than 3,000 samples. Against seven labs (all government) in Assam then, Kerala has 22 labs (15 government and seven private).