Surkhet : The test for coronavirus has been affected in Karnali state in lack of testing kits. The officials said that the kits to collect and processing the samples of throat swab have finished. Likewise, real time polymer chain reaction (RT-PCR) has not yet been brought into operation at Karnali Institute of Health Sciences, Jumla due to lack of kits though the RT-PCR was installed last week.

This has also affected the tests of those suspected cases in Jumla. Likewise, the test has also been affected in the Province Hospital, Surkhet. Hospital’s Director Dr Dambar Khadka shared that there are limited kits that are sufficient to test only 300 samples. The Ministry of Health and Population had provided with the PCR machine to the province hospital that was procured from China.

The machines in Surkhet and Jumla of Karnali can test 96 swab samples at a time but the virus transfer media (VTM) and PRC processing kits meant for bringing the swab samples to the laboratory were over. State Health Director of Karnali, Dr Rita Bhandari, said that additional 1,100 VTM sets and processing kits were demanded a week ago but they have not yet supplied. “This has affected the RDT and PCR tests,” Dr Bhandari said. According to her, 5,500 individuals have undergone RDT while has been performed on some 1000 but no one has been infected with the virus so far. RSS