New Delhi: Government and private labs testing for Covid-19 in Delhi are divided over whether they can double their testing capacity in a week, as promised by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
While some of the labs, ThePrint spoke to, said that they had the capacity to double testing, others pointed to limited resources and personnel and said that a week’s notice is too little a time-frame to ramp up testing capacity by a double.
The chief minister had Wednesday said that Delhi will double its testing capacity by next week to 40,000 tests a day. This, after a high-level meeting was called to discuss the uptick in coronavirus cases in the capital in the week preceding his announcement.
Daily cases in Delhi have virtually doubled from 652 on 16 August to 1,693 cases on 26 August. Kejriwal said that while the overall situation remains under control, there is a need to continue with the strategy of tracking, testing and isolating.
As of 27 August, Delhi has recorded a total of 1,67,604 cases with 4,369 deaths and 1,500,27 recoveries.
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Delhi’s rising cases and declining testing
ThePrint had reported that despite a month-long trend of the number of new cases dipping, August has seen an uptick of cases. In 10 days, daily cases virtually doubled to 1,693 cases on 26 August from 652 on 16 August (see box). On 27 August, it climbed to 1,840 cases, the highest in 48 days.
Along with the increase in cases, there has been a decline in testing in the national capital. Data available on Covidtoday.in shows that daily tests fell by over 10,000 a day in the period between 16 July and 16 August.
While daily tests stood at 20,225 on 16 July, it dropped to 10,709 on 16 August.
In the period between 16 August and 26 August, the daily tests reached 20,000 a day on only two occasions (see box).
Highlighting the uptick in cases and the need to double tests, Kejriwal said, “Delhi government will double testing in a week to 40,000 tests a day.”
He also urged people to get tested to curb the spread of the virus.
“People do not realise that if they do not get tested in time they will end up infecting many people around them. People can get tested for free in any government hospital or dispensary,” he said. “We are getting cases where 7-8 people from one one family are getting infected, and this is because a single infected person did not get tested for many days even after having symptoms and infecting others.”
Labs divided on doubling capacity
According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) website, Delhi has 66 labs for Covid testing — 23 government and 43 private labs.
ThePrint spoke to nine of the labs, of which three said doubling testing capacity in a week is an achievable target, five clarified that they can only partially improve testing while one said increasing capacity was not even an option as of now.
The Delhi government-run Rajiv Gandhi Superspeciality Hospital, and private labs — Sterlis Accuris Diagnostics Private Limited and CRL Diagnostics Private Limited — were confident that they can double testing within the week.
The central government-run All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), the Delhi government’s Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences and private labs — Mahajan Imaging Private Limited, Star Imaging, Path Lab Limited and B.L. Kapoor Hospital — said they can only partially improve testing.
The central government-run Lady Hardinge Hospital, though, said that it was already running at full testing capacity and would not be able to increase capacity further.
The labs also said that due to the bulk of the testing in the national capital being conducted using Rapid Antigen Testing, the pressure is now less on ramping up the more time-consuming Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tests, which is considered to be the gold standard for testing by the World Health Organization (WHO).
“It is possible to increase capacity easily now because the bulk of the samples are tested by antigen testing; we are not conducting RT PCR tests to our full capacity,” said Dr B.L. Sherwal, director, Rajiv Gandhi Superspeciality Hospital. “We can double personnel and increase the cycles on our machines and easily double capacity.”
Private labs that ThePrint spoke to however said that the government has only asked them to increase capacity and not specified whether testing needs to be doubled or not.
“As of now, the government has only asked us to quote how far capacity can be increased and we have said that due to the high load of antigen tests, our RT PCR machines can double capacity and even run three times the present capacity,” said Dr Gauri Agarwal at CRL Diagnostics Private Limited.
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Need resources and personnel to double capacity
Other private labs that ThePrint spoke to said while increasing capacity is possible to an extent, doubling capacity in a week is not.
“The load is less on RT PCR machines due to high antigen tests but we can only increase that by 10-20 per cent. In order to double testing, we will need personnel as well as more machines, which is difficult in a week’s time,” said Dr Shalley Mahajan of Mahajan Imaging Private Limited.
Private labs that are part of hospitals said that doubling capacity will be difficult due to the hospital’s own samples. “We are a 150-bed Covid hospital and so we get samples from our hospital that we have to test. Rapid antigen testing is conducted on both OPD and in-patient departments from 9 am to 5 pm,” said Dr Purabi Barman of BL Kapoor Hospital.
“The RT PCR is a complicated test that needs machines and trained personnel. We have shared the increased capacity that we can handle with the government but doubling in a week won’t be possible,” added Dr Barman, who is the principal consultant and head of the microbiology department at BL Kapoor hospital.
Even the central government-run Lady Hardinge Hospital said that doubling capacity in a week is impossible. “As of now we haven’t got any notification to ramp up testing. Even if the notification comes, we can’t ramp up testing as we are already running at full capacity and conducting antigen tests only for healthcare workers. Unless the government sanctions another machine, we cannot ramp up testing,” said Prof N.N. Mathur, director, Lady Hardinge Hospital.
Dr Sanjay Rai, professor of Community Medicine at AIIMS, however, said that with close to 30 per cent of the population already infected, according to the latest sero survey, the focus should now be on mitigating deaths.
“There’s a spike in cases only because people have become complacent. But a new peak is unlikely in Delhi given the sero survey results,” said Dr Rai. “There can be ups and downs because we are moving towards herd immunity but have not reached it yet. Focus should now be on mitigating deaths.”
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