Of 1 lakh target, Jharkhand govt tests 50k samples in 3 days

RANCHI: The Jharkhand health department’s ambitious plan to test one lakh Covid-19 samples across the state during a three-day special drive between July 31 and August 2 has failed to achieve its target with the health workers collecting and testing only about 50,000 samples.

However, the state chapter of the National Health Mission (NHM said it is content with the number of samples collected and tested.

Talking to TOI, NHM state director Ravi Shankar Shukla said the state’s daily testing rate has seen considerable improvement compared to the past because of the special push. Health department sources maintained that non-timely arrival of kits, lack of manpower and faulty collection of samples could be some of the reasons for not achieving the target.

He said, “The information we received so far from different districts is that 50,000 samples have been collected/tested during the special drive. Data entry of 30,000 samples has been completed while the rest are in the process of being registered which will start reflecting in the official data soon.”

Shukla further said, “Our daily testing rate now is more than double than earlier, touching an average mark of around 15,000 tests per day compared to about 6,000-7000 earlier.” He also clarified that NHM’s daily Covid-19 bulletin is not reflecting the tests done through rapid antigen test kits.

He said, “We had distributed around 35,000 antigen testing kits in all 24 districts and are being used vigorously for Covid-19 testing besides TrueNat and RT-PCR machines. The daily bulletin is taking into account the two latter forms of tests currently.” The state government is also working overnight to expand the testing facilities to cover large sections of the population, he added.

Earlier this week, chief minister Hemant Soren had launched an RT-PCR machine at Palamu Medical College Hospital lab, adding to the existing labs at Rims and Itki in Ranchi, MGM in Jamshedpur, PMCH in Dhanbad and HMCH in Hazaribag. Private hospitals like TMH in Jamshedpur and Gurunanak super speciality hospital in Ranchi along with four private labs have been empowered to test the samples. Speaking to reporters a few days back, Soren had announced that the government will begin testing at the block levels, too.