There has been a manifold increase in the coronavirus testing capacity in Chhattisgarh.
The quantum of sample testing per day has jumped from 1,299 on May 13 to 3,339 on May 22, Dr Priyanka Shukla, Director National Health Mission, Chhattisgarh, wrote on Twitter on Saturday.
By May 22, in all 3,339 samples were tested in six Covid-19 testing centres across Chhattisgarh.
“Daily Covid-19 testing status in Chhattisgarh for the last 10 days have been constantly on the rise. Presently samples are being tested in six designated labs in the state, five of which are in government health facilities,” Dr Shukla tweeted.
As per the data shared by Dr Shukla, in just nine days, the quantum of sample testing per day jumped from 1,299 on May 13 to 3,339 on May 22.
This is due to an increase in the number of testing centres.
Currently, there are six Covid-19 testing labs in Chhattisgarh -- AIIMS Raipur, Pt JLN Memorial Medical College Raipur, Baliram Kashyap Medical College Jagdalpur, Medical College Raigarh, Intermediate Reference Laboratory (IRL) at Regional Leprosy Training and Research Institute, Lalpur, Raipur, and SRL Lab Raipur.
Only SRL lab is a private player. All others are government-run labs.
“For further increasing the testing capacity of these labs, the state government is going to very soon hire lab technicians so that we can operate them in three shifts,” Dr Akhilesh Tripathi from the State Covid-19 Control and Command Centre said.
