Maintain standard procedures, quality testing for COVID-19 kits: Health experts

Amid growing concerns over the spread of the novel coronavirus, health experts strongly opine on maintaining standard procedures and using quality testing kits. They are of the opinion that while increasing the tests and capping the prices, the quality of consumables being used in testing coronavirus for collecting samples should not be compromised.

New Delhi: With the central government capping prices for COVID-19 tests, health experts strongly opine on maintaining standard procedures and using quality testing kits.

While increasing the tests and capping the prices, the quality of consumables being used in testing coronavirus for collecting samples should not be compromised, they said.

Dr Harshal R Salve, associate professor, centre for community medicine at AIIMS said, "Quality assurance during COVID-19 laboratory testing is of utmost importance for ensuring correct testing and thus isolation of COVID positive cases. The government has capped the pricing of RT-PCR testing in the interest of the public and also to increase voluntary testing. This should not be taken as an opportunity to compromise the quality of testing especially in private laboratories and hospitals."

Dr SP Byotra, Chairman, internal medicine, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital said, "With price capping for COVID test maintaining quality is very important. Safety of healthcare workers is also dependent on their exposure to the virus which directly transcribes from the quality of the virus handling materials especially the viral transport medium which carries the virus as in case of any leakage in the same post-collection it becomes dangerous for the spread having loads of live virus in it. So, using quality products for handling COVID samples should also be given equal importance in order to reduce infection among healthcare workers," he said.

"It is essential to use viral transport medium (VTM) manufactured in line with USFDA and ICMR standards and using tubes which are completely leak-proof proven. Substandard quality products put healthcare workers at risk, so it becomes very important for us to protect our healthcare workers during the pandemic by using quality products for sample collection along with stringent parameters," said Anil Hota, CEO of SAR Cellulabs Pvt Ltd," a Gurugram based company which deals in providing consumables for COVID testing.

"We should aim for enhancing production capabilities abiding by USFDA standards and validating it by ICMR at the most affordable prices," Hota further added.

(ANI)