COVID-19: Chhattisgarh to start pool testing in couple of days, says Deo; Rues Centre's conservative testing strategy

Chhattisgarh will start pool sample testing for COVID-19 in a couple of days, state's Health Minister T S Singh Deo said on Friday, while ruing the Modi government's "conservative" testing strategy instead of an "aggressive" approach, which would have put the country in a much better position to fight the pandemic.

In an interview to PTI, Deo also said the Chhattisgarh government is in the process of procuring 75,000 rapid testing kits on its own and has also asked the Centre for providing some.

"We have re-tendered for 75,000 kits on Thursday. We have also appealed to the Central government (for giving us kits) which I hear is to get a tranche of about 6,40,000 kits from abroad. Chhatisgarh is one of those states where we don't have even a single kit today," Deo said.

The Centre is likely to send rapid testing kits to the state by Saturday, he said. However, he was not aware of the number being sent.

He also asserted that the personal protective equipment (PPE) for medical personnel, including doctors and nurses, dealing directly with COVID-19 patients was in short supply.

On the state set to adopt pool testing, Deo said, "We were one of those states asking for it. On Tuesday, the ICMR cleared this. We have talked to the laboratories at AIIMS and the medical college (Pt Jawahar Lal Nehru Memorial Medical College) in Raipur. They are in agreement that they will be able to do it," he said.

AIIMS Raipur has a capacity of 350-400 sample tests in a day and with pool testing it can go up to 2,000, while the Raipur medical college has about 100-120 samples capacity which would be able to go up to 500-600 in a day, he said, adding that "the pool testing would start within a day or two."