BMC ready to start antigen testing in all its dispensaries

Soon non-Covid patients visiting BMC-run dispensaries and peripheral hospitals will need to undergo antigen testing. According to BMC officials, the initiative is a precautionary measure to identify if anyone has symptoms of coronavirus. It will also help ramp up testing at the secondary health care facilities.

Currently, there are 175 dispensaries where patients related to monsoon ailments and other illnesses will be treated. So far 80,000 antigen tests have been done across Mumbai. “Our first priority will be to test people with symptoms. Then we will test the close contacts of positive patients with rapid antigen,” said an official.

Suresh Kakani, Additional Municipal Commissioner, BMC said they will be providing 500 to 1,000 rapid testing kits to all its dispensaries. Moreover, antigen testing will also start at 16 peripheral hospitals. “Till now antigen testing has been done at the Covid Care Centres (CCC) and hospitals. To ramp up testing, we have decided to allow antigen testing in dispensaries and peripheral hospitals for better accessibility to people,” he said. Senior officials said over 70 laboratory technicians have been given training in the first phase at the three major civicrun hospitals— King Edward Memorial (KEM), BYL Nair and Lokmanya Tilak General hospitals. “We started the training programme three days ago and by next week, they will all know how to carry out the antigen tests at dispensaries and peripheral hospitals," said an official. BMC is conducting more than 2,000 antigen tests on a daily basis. In the first instalment, BMC procured one lakh antigen testing kits. Now as 80 per cent of the kits have been used, meanwhile BMC has floated a tender to procure another 50,000 kits.