KMU lab enhances corona testing capacity

PESHAWAR: The Public Health Reference Laboratory of Khyber Medical University (KMU) in Peshawar has raised its testing capacity of coronavirus from 40 to 700 on a daily basis.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s lone medical university in the public sector, KMU was tasked with investigations of coronavirus by Chief Minister Mahmood Khan. Chief Secretary Dr Kazim Niaz visited the university and provided funds to it after outbreak of the fatal disease here. The university initiated its investigations from 40 tests daily, however with rise in the number of patients, the KP government and KMU administration planned to increase the testing capacity.

The KMU can now undertake 700 tests on a daily basis and can even conduct 1000 investigations daily if required. “We are able to do 700 tests daily but can raise it 1000 in case of emergency,” said an official of the university. Meanwhile, Vice-Chancellor KMU Prof Dr Arshad Javaid has said that the KMU-PHRL was a world-class laboratory where tests and other safeguards have been developed in accordance with the World Health Organization’s standards. “All necessary protocols are being taken as special care measures,” he said. Regarding the less percentage of tests as compared to other provinces, Dr Arshad Javaid said that the discrepancy between population of these provinces and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as well as keeping in mind the number of tests done in the private sector in these provinces was the basic reason behind the difference in the overall ratio of tests between KP and other provinces.

“All samples from different hospitals in the province are received under a specific protocol and the results are released within 24 hours without any delay. There are no pending samples or any backlog in the laboratory and 6544 tests have been conducted so far out of which 1102 were positive and 5064 declared as negative,” said the KMU vice chancellor.

He hoped the provincial government would increase the number of daily tests to about 3000 in the next few with the establishment of labs in Swat, Dera Ismail Khan and Abbottabad. He said, the KMU-PHRL has the capacity and experience of pool testing and under that mechanism we could process many samples quickly by using lesser kits. The technique of pooling was used when frequency of disease was low, less than 5 per cent but ideally less than 1 per cent,” he added.