Monday, 05 October 2020 | PNS | Dehradun
Conduct audit of labs, says SDCF founder
Pointing towards major variation in the results of the samples tested for Covid-19 in government labs, noted social activist and founder of Social Development for Communities Foundation (SDCF), Anoop Nautiyal has said that the health department should audit these labs. He said that the department should consider doing an audit of all labs on the lines of similar scrutiny done by it for the private labs. Giving an example of the huge variation in test results, Nautiyal said that on October 2, two cases of Covid-19 were reported out of 456 samples tested in Nainital district. It amounted for 0.4 percent of Infection Rate (IR). On the other hand, 71 positive cases out of 302 tests conducted were reported on October 3 which puts the IR at 24 percent. He said that the reason for this wide variation should be known.
Meanwhile the weekly analysis of the Covid-19 shows that less number of tests was done in the week ending on October 3. In this week, which was 29th week since the first case of the disease was reported on March 15, only 62889 tests were done in the state. Incidentally in the 29th week the lowest number of tests was done in the last six weeks. In the 28th week 73895 tests were conducted while in the 27th week (September 13 to September 19) 84664 tests were done. The fewer number of tests is reflected in fewer cases of the disease in the 29th week which saw only 3781 fresh Covid-19 cases. In this week 6446 recoveries and 82 deaths were reported.
