Salem GH scales up testing facilities for COVID-19

20/04/2020, VIGNESH VIJAYAKUMAR

Authorities have scaled up facilities at the Government Mohan Kumaramangalam Medical College Hospital here to increase the pace of testing and provide results of COVID-19 test samples at the earliest.

Govt. approved lab

The viral research and diagnostic laboratory at the Government Mohan Kumaramangalam Medical College Hospital is one of the Government laboratories in the State approved to conduct Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction tests on COVID-19 samples.

Capacity increased

R. Balajinathan, Dean of the hospital said, “the capacity of the lab here has been increased three-fold. The equipment required for conducting the tests has been doubled and thrice the strength has been deployed for conducting the tests here. The lab, which was earlier conducting testing of 150 samples can now test up to 540 samples.

Also, under a professor and assistant professor, 18 post-graduate students and 24 lab technicians have been posted at the lab and they would be working across three shifts here.

“Through this, we would be able to know results of RT-PCR tests in six-eight hours,” he said.

According to authorities, as on Saturday, 2,760 samples have been tested here.