IDLE CAPACITIES AT LABORATORIES AS ‘GOLD STANDARD’ TESTS FALL

As Covid-19 cases in the country decline, so has the testing — down from almost 10 million to around 700,000 a day — leaving diagnostic labs with under-utilised equipment and manpower, that they ramped up in the wake of the pandemic.

Many labs are now repurposing the RTPCR technology to test diseases such as HIV, Tuberculosis, Hepatitis with the demand for non-covid-19 tests catching up. While there has been a pick-up in demand owing to rising cases in states such as Maharashtra, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu, testing labs in most parts of the country are seeing a drop in demand for RT-PCR tests, considered the gold standard for detecting Covid-19 in a patient.

In fact, a central team sent to Maharashtra pointed out the drop in testing numbers as one of the reasons for the rising number of cases. “Slowdown in testing prevents early detection of cases and in containing the spread in a timely manner,” a senior official said.

A Chennai-based laboratory, which did not wish to be named, said that from handling 5,000 samples per day, it is now down to doing only 500 RT-PCR tests as the cases have come down.

At the industry level, the utilisation of RT-PCR machines is about 30 per cent of the installed capacity, said lab chains.

“Investments were made in response to the needs of the country. We built a lot of capacity from scratch,” said Harsh Mahajan, founder and chief radiologist at Mahajan Imaging, and senior vice-president, NATHEALTH. “But if there is no demand, there is nothing we can do. People are now very relaxed about the virus which is not a good sign.”

In New Delhi, in the last two weeks, testing numbers have dropped from over 60,000 to around 40,000.

Several testing labs had made big investments in ramping up capacity with new machinery, automatic extractors, hiring more people such as sample collection teams, data entry operators, and technicians. Many also increased the number of collection centres in view of rising demand at the time when pandemic soared in the country. Radiologists believe that while the increased investments in testing was the need of the hour and the capping of prices did not make things any easier for labs, the diagnostics sector has managed a technological upgrade with increased use of RT-PCR testing.

“It is the most sensitive way to detect an infection and has given us a chance to expand our testing menu with far more accurate results,” a senior radiologist said.

Experts said with trained manpower and infrastructure for molecular testing that was developed last year, the labs need to brainstorm to come up with viable alternate ways to utilise these resources.

Arindam Haldar, CEO of Thyrocare Technologies, said manpower that was added during the pandemic is now being used for other purposes. “The manpower that was hired was not highly salaried people. Mostly the phlebotomists (those who collect blood samples) were trained to do the swab sample collection, and are now being used for other purposes. This is not too much of a drain,” Haldar explained. Also these people will come in handy as non-covid19 testing is picking up. “The demand for non-covid tests is slowly picking up as people who had postponed their health care requirements at the peak of the pandemic are now opting for health services. The number of patient infections has been lower as people have largely been at home,” said Ameera Shah, promoter and managing director, Metropolis Healthcare.