Covid testing hit as employees shut lab in Patiala

Advertisement

Patiala, September 14

Covid testing came to a standstill today after employees of the Viral Research and Diagnostic Laboratory at Government Medical College, who have been protesting for the past several days, shut the doors of the lab.

The district Health Department has written to the higher-ups to make alternative arrangements for the testing of Covid samples. The department has 40 -50 RTPCR samples which were yet to be tested.

Notably, protesting lab employees are demanding that they should be absorbed into the Department of Medical Education. They said they were hired on outsourcing basis at the time of the Covid-19 outbreak and their cadre was still the same, which they wanted to be changed. They added that they had not received salary since July.

International travellers and in-patients were among the worst hit with the closure of the lab. To overcome the problem, the Health Department has started conducting rapid antigen test instead of the RTPCR. Rapid antigen test is conducted on the spot while RTPCR samples have to be sent to the lab for testing.

The department today collected only 191 Covid samples from across the district. Officials said a majority of the samples were rapid antigen test.

When asked about the potential increasing pendency, Dr Sumeet Singh, district epidemiologist, said, “We have only a few samples that couldn’t be tested today. We will send these to some other lab.”