Idle capacities at labs as 'gold standard' tests for detecting Covid fall

Fewer RT-PCR tests than capacity at many places; non-Covid tests pick up

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 RT-PCR 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.