INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Kathmandu, May 8
The government, which has been criticised for not ramping up coronavirus tests even during the lockdown, has decided to
resort to pool testing to identify new COVID-19 cases.
The National Public Health Laboratory has issued a circular to laboratories across
the country to conduct pool testing using polymerase chain reaction method
The laboratory had issued the circular based on instruction from the Ministry of Health and Population.
&Testing will begin immediately and
it will be done as per the protocol we have developed,& said NPHL Director Runa Jha.
Under pool testing, throat and nasal swabs of at least
The samples are then collectively examined using PCR method.
&If the result is negative, all 10 people will be declared free from
But if the result is positive, we will conduct individual tests of throat and nasal swabs of all 10 people to find out who has been
infected,& said NPHL Virologist Shravan Kumar Mishra
&This will help us cut the cost significantly, as we will be able to conduct more tests with limited number of reagents and human
resources.&
It costs around Rs 3,000 to Rs 4,000 to conduct a PCR test.
The government made this announcement at a time when it has been
criticised for failing to rapidly expand PCR tests, which are much more reliable than rapid diagnostic tests
Almost 80 per cent of all tests conducted so far are rapid diagnostic
Many have cited fewer PCR tests as one of the reasons for detection of only 102 COVID-19 cases so far and have asked the government to ramp
As of today, the government has conducted 15,492 PCR tests
&Pool testing will help us ramp up PCR tests,& said Bikash Devkota, spokesperson for the health ministry.
In the initial phase, pool testing
will be conducted among people staying in quarantine centres and among those who are at low risk of contracting the disease
Those facing high risk will have to undergo individual PCR tests
Over 15,000 people are staying in quarantine centres across the country.
According to the pool testing protocol, samples of persons will be
collected within first five to ten days of joining the quarantine centre
The person who undergoes test will have to stay in the quarantine centre for 14 days even if s/he has tested negative
After 14 days, the person should undergo rapid diagnostic test even if his or her PCR test generates negative result
If the rapid test result is also negative, the person will be released from the quarantine centre and asked to self quarantine for another
week.
These tests will be conducted in 14 laboratories across the country
&These tests will be done using PCR machines that can examine larger number of specimens
The laboratory technicians should be more careful while conducting tests as there are chances of contamination of samples,& said Mishra,
adding, &Pool screening can also help us trace asymptomatic cases.&
A version of this article appears in e-paper on May 9, 2020, of The
Himalayan Times.
The post Government set to begin pool testing to trace novel coronavirus infection appeared first on The Himalayan Times.
