Nearly a fortnight after the State government announced that COVID-19 testing laboratories will be set up in Belagavi, Ballari and Hubballi, the facilities are yet to be started.
Of the five laboratories in the State, only one is in North Karnataka.
The newly set up laboratory at the Gulbarga Institute of Medical Sciences in Kalaburagi can handle 30 tests per day. The other testing centres are in Hassan, Shivamogga and Bengaluru..
Health Minister B. Sriramulu has on different occasions announced that testing laboratories will be opened in Belagavi, Ballari and Hubballi to reduce the pressure on the laboratories in Bengaluru and to ensure speedy results. But they are yet to be set up.
The test results are getting delayed due to the distance and the crowding in the laboratories, say officials. “For example, 15 swab samples have been sent from Belagavi,” said a doctor from Belagavi, involved in the COVID-19 management process.
Officials say that the process of setting up laboratories is on and that two laboratories in North Karnataka will be set up in a few days. There are some issues with the approval process. The sole agency to approve such laboratories is the Indian Council of Medical Research. “We are facing difficulty getting quick clearances from ICMR,” an officer in the Health Ministry said.
Belagavi has all the necessary equipment for testing. The ICMR-National Institute of Traditional Medicine, which was earlier called the institute for tropical diseases, has the PCR testing machine.
It also has trained scientists who can supervise testing. “We have sent a detailed proposal to the State government and it has been forwarded to ICMR. We are hoping to receive a positive response in a week,” a senior officer said.
In Ballari, the PCR testing kit equipment has been procured. There is a proposal to set up the laboratory in the Vijayanagar Institute of Medical Sciences in Ballari. But the ICMR approval is yet to come. In Hubballi, the government plans to set up the laboratory in the Karnataka Institute of Medical Sciences. All the preparations to install testing kits are on. A proposal has been sent to ICMR.
The PCR kits help conduct a detailed polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test to spot the proteins in the coronavirus and identify the virus. The virus has a ribonucleic acid and some proteins in its body. When the virus enters a human body, it lodges itself in the lungs and creates smaller versions of itself. When this is not challenged by the body’s immune system, it could cause problems and even death, a doctor in the district COVID-19 team said.
