JORHAT, July 23 - The COVID-19 testing centre at the CSIR-NEIST at Pulibor here has completed testing of 10,000 swab samples.
It may be mentioned here that on May 30, Health and Family Welfare Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had inaugurated the testing laboratory of the institute.
Disclosing to this newspaper, a CSIR-NEIST official said that after the successful completion of testing 10,000 samples, the CSIR-NEIST authorities have decided to ramp up the daily testing capacity of the laboratory, from its present 400 samples per day to 3,000 samples per day, in view of the present COVID-19 scenario of the district.
The official stated that the institute wanted to enhance the testing capacity of the laboratory with an aim to check the spread of the novel coronavirus.
The official informed that CSIR-NEIST Director Dr G Narahari Sastry has initiated the process to boost the testing capacity of the laboratory per day in consultation with the Jorhat district administration and the State Government. �The infrastructure development for raising the testing capacity of the laboratory will be done by� the CSIR, while additional manpower and the running expenditure will be met by the Assam Government,� he said.
The proposed strengthening of the testing capacity of the laboratory was expected to be ready within a week.
The initiative was taken with strong support extended by the Director-General of CSIR, Dr� Shekhar Mande, after having discussion with the Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Harsh Vardhan. The CSIR-NEIST laboratory became the eight laboratory for testing COVID-19 in the State at the time of its opening.
