After the consent given by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the microbiology lab of the Government Doon Medical College (GDMC) hospital here is gearing itself to start testing for COVID-19. The Principal of the GDMC, Dr Ashutosh Sayana, said that the necessary equipment has been installed in the laboratory and training to the staff has been given for testing of swab samples of suspected patients. The medical college is now awaiting written confirmation from the ICMR for starting the tests.
In the State, the testing facilities of COVID-19 are available only at the laboratory of department of microbiology of Government Medical College, Haldwani and All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Rishikesh. Till last month Lab of Haldwani was the only facility in the state for COVID-19. On March 31, the AIIMS Rishikesh also started doing the tests. The ICMR has also approved the lab of Indian Institute of Petroleum (IIP) to conduct the test but here the machine has not been installed yet. In private sector, Ahuja lab in Dehradun has also been authorised to conduct tests.
The confirmatory test of the COVID-19 involves detection of Ribo Nucleic Acid (RNA) of the virus by the PCR method.