Coronavirus in Chandigarh: GMCH-32 equipped to test 70 samples per day

According to an official from the Mumbai office of SRL diagnostics, the delay in commencing testing and swab collection in their labs across the country is due to the difficulties caused by the 21-day lockdown imposed by the government to enforce social distancing in the country.




The Government Medical College and Hospital in Sector 32 (GMCH-32) is set to begin COVID 19 testing in its own laboratory. An official responsible for the testing process at the hospital says that the hospital already has a PCR testing machine and has availed yet another machine to increase the testing capacity of the hospital. A total of around seventy tests can now be conducted if needed in one round of testing. “If the two machines are operated simultaneously, at least seventy swabs can be tested at a time,” claimed the official.

More testing centers in Chandigarh

After clearing tertiary government medical institutions such as the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) in Chandigarh, the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) approved a list of medical colleges as testing centers, and finally even extended the scope of testing to vetted private laboratories in order to increase the testing capacity in the country.

Increasing the number of testing kits and capacity for testing in India is crucial as the World Health Organization (WHO) has repeatedly advised affected countries to increase testing in order to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.Doctors from the PGIMER laboratory, which was the first to begin testing for COVID-19 in the city, state that they have received an average of 30 to 40 or more samples for testing every day.

After the government decided to allow government medical hospitals equipped with necessary testing machines to begin preparing for testing, GMCH-32 also began preparations to start testing for COVID-19. The hospital currently has six of the seven COVID 19 patients from Chandigarh admitted to its isolation ward, and has suspected patients sampled in its wards regularly.

FICCI circulated a list identifying SRL laboratory in Sector 11 in Chandigarh as one of the testing centre approved by the ICMR. However, an official from the local center claimed that testing will not be conducted at the Chandigarh SRL laboratory.

“We will take swabs of patients from Chandigarh and send it to our lab in Gurgaon for testing. But there is no clarity as of yet from the government as to how this process will work and when we can
begin collecting swabs,” said the official.

Testing in private labs delayed due to the lockdown

According to an official from the Mumbai office of SRL diagnostics, the delay in commencing testing and swab collection in their labs across the country is due to the difficulties caused by the 21-day lockdown imposed by the government to enforce social distancing in the country.

“There are many delays in delivery of testing kits and equipment. Sending the swabs across from Chandigarh to Gurgaon will also take time, so we have to finalise everything with the administration before we begin the process. We need clearances for transportation etc, so it will probably take a week more before we begin collecting samples from our Chandigarh laboratory,” explained the official.
At GMCH-32 as well, a senior doctor explained the difficulties in beginning the testing process due to the lockdown, even though they have most of the equipment in place.“We need a software engineer to come and help us with the new machine and he has to come from Delhi. So we have to get a pass from ICMR so he has permission to travel. Before that we had to source other material such as testing reagents from Pune. There have been too many delays due to the lockdown which would have otherwise not occurred,” said the doctor.

Testing process

GMCH-32 already had a PCR testing machine for swine flu, which can now be used for testing samples for COVID-19. The PCR or polymerase chain reaction test remains the same for most viral diagnosis including for diagnosis of Influenza or the H1N1 virus.

However, the reagents used for each virus differ. Reagents refer to a chemical that amplifies the RNA or DNA sample of the virus and helps in a creating a chain of DNA or RNA which can be analysed or graphed to detect the presence of the virus in the sample. “We acquired our reagents from the Indian Institute of Virology in Pune,” said a doctor of the hospital.

The doctor added that the hospital has sourced latest version of PCR machine which has a higher testing capacity. While the first machine, which is a 2010 model, can test about 25 samples at a time, the second, which is the 2020 model, has a capacity to test 45 at a time. Both the testing machines will take 4.5 to 6 hours to produce the test results.

“If used simultaneously, we can test about 70 samples with twice the amount of reagents. And if we run two batches in one day, this can be doubled to 140 ideally,” said the doctor. The hospital has already conducted successful trials of the machines, and will begin testing from Friday.

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