The COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) scare that gripped the State is gradually dying down. At the Kerala unit of the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Alappuzha, there is a sense of pride and contentment on the faces of scientists and technicians that comes from a job well done with minimal staff and facilities.
The Alappuzha unit has been among a small number of laboratories in the country — apart from the NIV, Pune, the apex laboratory — designated as State nodal laboratory for testing COVID-19. It has so far tested 458 samples collected from 411 individuals.
A.P. Sugunan, Scientist-G and Officer-in-Charge, NIV, Kerala, says capacity building at the NIV unit, a Biosafety Level (BSL) 2 laboratory, in a short span of time was a humongous challenge. “With the help of the NIV, Pune, we standardised the unit in three days and started testing samples from February 2. We created separate space and safety measures for processing samples from already known positive cases. During the Nipah outbreak, samples were tested at the NIV Kerala unit, but this time it was a different challenge altogether. The number of sample loads coming to the unit is considerably high compared to Nipah. This tested the efficacy of NIV Kerala for the very first time, since its inception a few years ago. However, we are able to rise to the occasion,” Dr. Sugunan says.
Capacity
They have created the capacity to test 100-150 samples a day. At the height of the scare, the unit had been receiving samples between 70 and 80 a day. It takes around seven hours for testing samples for the disease. In the face of the emergency, around 20 people, including scientists, technicians and other staff at the NIV, have been working round the clock in shifts for the last three weeks.
“We could not push samples arriving into storage as we had to send results within 24 hours. Our achievement can be attributed to teamwork and coordination,” Dr. Sugunan says, adding the number of samples has come down to around 20 in recent days. Equipping the unit for testing COVID-19 has helped identify negative cases in the State faster. However, it has been barred from disclosing positive results as aliquot of the samples need to be send to Pune for reconfirmation of positive cases.
The unit at Government Medical College Hospital, Alappuzha, will be shifted to Kuravanthodu once work on permanent building is completed.
