Panchkula may make Covid test mandatory before surgery

Sanjay Bumbroo

Panchkula, December 31

The Health Department is mulling over making the Covid test mandatory before conducting a surgery at the Civil Hospital in Sector 6 here. Apart from surgery cases, samples of patients visiting the outdoor patient departments (OPDs) will also be taken if they showed Covid symptoms.

Till now, it was not necessary to conduct Covid test before surgery. Even if a suspected case was coming to the OPD, he was not being investigated.

Deputy Civil Surgeon Dr Sneh said flu corners were being set up in the health centres. At present, Covid tests were being done at a few centres. She said the Covid test was not mandatory so far, but they would start doing it after receiving directions from the state government.

Meanwhile, Covid testing would start at Subdivisional Hospital at Kalka, along with General Hospital and Community Health Centre (CHC) at Raipur Rani from the first week of January.

Sources, however, said the department did not have enough testing kits to start Covid testing at the CHC level. On the other hand, vaccination camps are being set up at the centres in which only Covaxin jabs would be offered to people as the department did not have Covishield or Corbivax in stock.

If anyone arrives from the infected country, his samples would be taken for testing and if found positive, then genome sequencing would be done to find out the Covid variant in their sample.

Genome sequencing is necessary to trace the new variant of coronavirus.