Nellore: Truenat kits to speed up Covid tests

Nellore: Soon after the district received 300 instant Truenat kits from the state government, doctors are not facing much pressure for confirming corona results in the district. They are conducting tests and declaring results within 50 minutes in case of negative. If it is positive, they would cross-check with the SVIMS, Tirupati doctors and announce the result later.

Earlier, doctors were only collecting samples from the suspected cases and sending them to the SVIMS, Tirupati, as it is the state nodal centre for Covid tests. Now, the GGH, Nellore, has been declared as state nodal centre. There has been huge pressure on the virology wing for conducting tests and declaring positive cases by coordinating with the National Institute of Virology, Pune.

Now, the state government understood the huge pressure and difficulty for day-to-day tests and results and finally engaged the Truenat kits traditionally being used for TB and Malaria diagnosis. The Truenat TB test is a molecular test that can diagnose TB within one hour using the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) technique. It takes about 25 minutes for the extraction of the DNA and another 35 minutes for diagnosing TB.

In fact, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had recommended the use of the Truenat test for screening tests for COVID-19, ten days ago. It has also approved the use of US-FDA approved real-time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) systems in emergency situations for finding the results.

The testing kits use Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) technology, which uses a swab from the throat to diagnose diseases, a more accurate method when it comes to diagnosis, officials say. Till now, the officials conducted tests on 239 samples, and detected more than five positive cases. Here, they are not simply declaring the result and coordinate with virology wing of the SVIMS, Tirupati and finally declare the result of the positive case.

"The RNA from the sample is separated and tested in Truenat machine isolating the virus. If we find the presence of virus, we send the sample to the SVIMS for final confirmation," said a senior official from the TB wing. He added that this is similar to TB and Malaria testing where the procedure has been adopted for COVID testing.

The district administration had issued notification for the recruitment of a huge number of qualified and experienced technicians for testing the samples after providing guidelines of protocols and precautions. Around 650 technicians would be deputed for the investigations. Now, officials are conducting tests in Government General Hospital, Narayana General Hospital currently and the officials have arranged similar testing centers in Kavali, Gudur Area Hospitals in the district.