Hyderabad: Private labs flout norms while conducting Covid tests, says panel

Hyderabad: The teams sent by the Health department to inspect the private labs and hospitals testing Covid cases, have painted a grim picture. They said that these private labs hardly follow norms and their staff is also not fully trained to do such kind of tests.

The report submitted by them stated that there was lack of safety measures; staff members were not wearing PPE; safety cabinets were not available and poor hygienic conditions existed there.

Also it was found that the staff conducting the tests has not been trained properly in RT-PCR testing. Measures for quality control and validation of tests were not followed in some of the labs.

Also, the committee also expressed suspicion of some labs of pooled testing being done, when all cases are reported as positive without doing individual testing leading to some negative cases also being shown as positive.

It will be studied by experts using the amplification plots generated by RT-PCR machines. It was also suspected that there is possibility of contamination of samples leading to high positivity rate as safety measures and protocols are not followed meticulously.

Another major concern expressed by the panel was that by the data entry into ICMR and State portals, is the disparity in the numbers uploaded by all the labs.