Mumbai, Jan 7 (PTI) A testing lab in Thane, which handles COVID samples from across the Mumbai metropolitan area, has hired additional manpower and invested in infrastructure as coronavirus cases are again surging in a big way.
“From the reports we were getting, we could gather that there will be a sharp increase in cases in the third wave. So we shortlisted people and asked our vendors to keep the necessary machinery ready,” Alpine Diagnostics Centres LLP’s co-founder Dr Sandip Jadhav told PTI.
Jadhav said when the cases started increasing, Alpine switched on its contingency plan, and could quickly onboard 40 more experienced people to its team of 112 employees, and also bought machinery worth over Rs 1 crore.
Dr Hrishikesh Chevle, another co-founder, said the planning has paid off, as the number of samples has increased three times in the span of a week.
Mumbai city alone recorded more than 20,000 new COVID-19 cases on Friday.
The lab was getting over 800 samples a day from Mumbai (excluding greater Mumbai) and the wider catchment stretching till Palghar in the north, Thane district and Panvel to the south before the start of the third wave. Now it is getting up to 3,000 samples a day.
Dr Chevle added that while the cases surged slowly in the first two waves, the growth has been very sharp in the third. We are not at the peak yet, he said, adding that the next three weeks are crucial for the diagnostics industry as well.
At present, the surge in cases has impacted the turnaround times for report dissemination, he said, adding that it is now taking up to 16 hours to inform a patient against the earlier eight hours.
But additional hiring and planning has ensured that the lab is not overwhelmed, he added.
Dr Jadhav said the additional staff and most of the equipment is a long term investment as there is no short term quick fix available with testing facilities. PTI AA KRK KRK
