Combating Corona Navi Mumbai civic body gets own lab to ramp up testing Focus on early tracing and isolation policy to break virus chain

In order to strengthen the testing and tracing capacity of those infected with Covid-19, the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) has set up its own testing lab that has the capacity to carry out upto 1,000 RT-PCR tests per day. Now, the civic body does not need to rely on private labs for test reports that of ten get delayed. The delay in reports was also hampering in the early tracing of infected persons.

The civic body is emphasizing a lot on early tracing and isolating infected persons to break the chain of coronavirus positive persons in the city. Soon af ter taking over charge, the civic chief Abhijit Bangar had told that the civic body would set up its own lab for COVID 19.

The civic body started tests of COVID -19 af ter getting approval from the Indian Council of Medical Research from Tuesday at Maa Saheb Meenatai Thackeray Hospital at Nerul. The lab, which is currently being used to test for COVID 19, will be used for testing for hepatitis, swine flu, leptospirosis, HIV, and other molecular tests in the future. “This fully automatic lab is a permanent milestone achievement for NMMC and a self-sufficient empowerment of the health department,” said a civic official.

Bangar had told that due to delay in receiving test reports, they were facing difficulties in implementation of COVID 19 measures. Earlier, the civic body was sending samples to either government-run lab or private labs for reports. Now, the focus of the civic body would be on increasing the number of tests to detect and isolate positive individuals as soon as possible. Currently, the civic body is conducting around 2500 Rapid Antigen tests daily from 22 Antigen testing centers across the city. “Now, with the state-ofthe-art fully automated lab with the capacity to per form 1000 RTPCR tests a day, the civic body will speed up the testing of COVID 19,” said an official from the Health Department.