Jammu: Stepping up COVID-19 testing in the Union territory, the microbiology department of Government Medical College (GMC) in Jammu achieved yet another milestone by carrying out more than 2,100 tests in a day through introduction of partial automation, an official spokesman said on Monday.
The 2,143 samples are more than the daily average of 1,300 samples per day during the past two months, thus, accounting for an increase of about 39.33 per cent, the spokesman said.
He said the testing of a substantial figure of 70,840 samples till date in the VRDL GMC Jammu has become possible only due to the strenuous efforts of clinical microbiologists, research scientists, laboratory technicians, para-medical staff, and connected staff, who have been working up to 18 hours a day since the outbreak of the pandemic in March.
Besides, more than 1.2 lakh tests, including screening and confirmatory runs, have also been carried out by the same dedicated, limited task force, as the test is technically very demanding and needs expertise and all these endeavours by the team have been carried out with a missionary zeal, the spokesman said.
He said the microbiology department is in the process of training and building human resources for new medical colleges to decentralise the enormous workload on account of the COVID-19 testing, besides routine testing of dengue, swine flu, hepatitis and other such contagious and other emerging novel agents.
“VRDL GMC Jammu is next only to SKIMS, Soura in testing, in the Union Territory. SKIMS is our referral VRDL lab with enormous state of the art infrastructure and resources, Head of Microbiology Department, GMC, Jammu, Shashi S Sharma, said.
He said VRDL GMC Jammu has been successful in overcoming many of the initial infrastructure deficiencies, startup hiccups and related miscellaneous hardships in a very professional manner with collective approach of all stakeholders.
With the ongoing upgradation of infrastructure and creation of an academic vibe and work culture, the department of microbiology is now fully geared to meet the challenge posed by COVID 19 pandemic, Sharma said.