COVID-19 testing starts at JPMC bio-safety lab

The Sindh government has established a bio-safety level 3 (BSL-3) clinical laboratory at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) in Karachi, said the provincial administration’s spokesman in a statement released to the media on Monday.

Barrister Murtaza Wahab said the lab has started working and is capable of conducting 100 novel coronavirus tests on a daily basis. The lab’s capacity to carry out a higher number of tests a day would be increased in the next stage, he added.

Wahab, who is also the chief minister’s law adviser, said the CM had reserved funds on the request of the JPMC administration to set up the lab at the hospital, adding that work on the project had started immediately.

He lamented that an important authority associated with the federal government had promised three weeks ago to establish a COVID-19 testing lab at the JPMC, but it was yet to materialise.

Dr Seemin Jamali, who is the executive director of the Jinnah Hospital, thanked the provincial government for helping with the setting up of the advanced coronavirus testing lab. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), a BSL-3 lab is designed and provided for work with Risk Group 3 microorganisms and with large volumes or high concentrations of Risk Group 2 microorganisms that pose an increased risk of aerosol spread.

The WHO defines Risk Group 3 pathogens as those that usually cause serious human or animal disease but do not ordinarily spread from one infected individual to another.

Risk Group 2 pathogens, as per the organisation, are those that can cause human or animal disease but are unlikely to be a serious hazard to laboratory workers, the community, livestock or the environment.

Despite being declared as the focal point for coronavirus in Sindh and having a large number of COVID-19 patients since the outbreak of viral disease in the province, the JPMC before Monday was sending the samples of suspected CVOID-19 patients initially to the Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH), later to the Ojha campus of the Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS) and of late to the Indus Hospital.

Established with around Rs45 million, virologists, biochemists and molecular scientists have been hired for the lab on a contractual basis. The lab is equipped with the latest real-time-PCR machine, which has the capacity of conducting 100 tests at a time, officials said. At the moment, seven public, private and charity hospitals including the Ojha campus of the DUHS, AKUH, Ziauddin University Hospital, Indus Hospital Karachi, Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT), Civil Hospital Karachi and JPMC are capable of testing for coronavirus in Karachi.