Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, May 28: Officer on Special Duty, J&K Health & Medical Education Department, Dr Owais Ahmed today reviewed ongoing sampling and testing of COVID-19 in Kashmir division.
Various issues with respect to functioning of all three COVID-19 testing labs of Kashmir division including receipt of samples from districts, coding of samples and their processing were discussed at length. During the meeting, it was stressed that perfect coordination is required between the field agencies and the labs so as to expedite the testing process and to make the reports available to the concerned immediately after testing. It was decided that the collection center of each lab will have a well coordinated mechanism of receipt of samples, their coding and decoding and subsequent testing.
It was brought up that the ongoing sampling has been going on smoothly both for contacts of positive cases and travelers reaching Kashmir division. The pool of technical staff trained for sampling has been able to take samples both at block level and village level through testing kiosks and mobile sampling teams. The sampling teams of the districts were advised to ensure that the samples collected by them reaches testing labs well in time so that there is no delay in testing and reporting of results to the concerned.
While stressing to further increase testing capacity in Kashmir division, it was appreciated that the labs functioning in Kashmir division have been able to increase their testing capacity by 20 times since March 2020 and the team of microbiologists was working 24 X 7 to expedite the testing process.
Dr Ghulam Hassan Yatoo, HoD and Nodal Officer SKIMS, Srinagar, Dr Jehangir Bakshi, CMO Srinagar, Dr Talat Jabeen, Divisional Coordinator for Sampling, Kashmir, Dr Nayeem ud din, Nodla Officer Microbiology, GMC Srinagar and Dr Talat Masoodi, Coordinator SKIMS-MC JVC, Srinagar among others were present in the meeting.
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