Telangana govt to ramp-up Covid-19 testing

In a review meeting on Covid-19 preparedness between Health Minister, Damodar Rajanarasimha and health authorities, it was decided to increase Covid-19 testing to at least 4,000 per day by this month end

Hyderabad: The State government on Saturday has decided to ramp-up Covid-19 testing at government health care facilities for quick identification of positive infections and streamline the process of genome sequencing so that corona virus variants that are circulating can be identified at the earliest.

In a review meeting on Covid-19 preparedness between Health Minister, Damodar Rajanarasimha and health authorities, it was decided to increase Covid-19 testing to at least 4000 per day by this month end.

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The health department will also send all RTPCR samples for genome sequencing to Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) and Gandhi Hospital. At present, the genetic laboratories at CDFD and Gandhi Hospital have received 40 RTPCR samples (30 from private and 10 from Government hospitals) and results are awaited.

The Health Minister said that the average time taken for genome sequencing is between 4 and 5 days. At present, all the 34 Government RTPCR labs have capacity of testing 16,500 samples per day and in addition there are 84 Private RTPCR labs in Telangana. So far, in the last two weeks, a total of 6, 344 samples have been collected for testing, health authorities said.

Widespread discussions were also held on non- functional PSA plants issues, which have to be resolved at the earliest and the need to ensure optimal utilization of Oxygen concentrators. Authorities have also decided to assess the gap of ventilators and make all the available ventilators functional.