Mumbai:
Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope on Wednesday said a private lab in the state has been stopped from conducting coronavirus tests for delay in providing results.
The private testing laboratories are unable to provide prompt results to state authorities, he said.
“Every report provided by them has to be rechecked in the state-run labs again. After the state-run lab confirms prevalence of the infection, the person is declared coronavirus positive,” Tope told reporters.
Out of the eight private labs conducting COVID-19 tests in the state, one facility failed to provide the data in time, he said.
“Thus we had to issue work suspension order for that lab. The remaining seven labs in the state are operational,” he said.
“We did not get the reports in time. They generally take one or two days more to submit the reports,” he said.
A couple of more state-run testing laboratories will be operational in the state in the next two days, he said.
“We can conduct as many as 5,000 (sample) tests in Maharashtra, out of which the state-run labs have a cumulative capacity of 1,500 tests per day,” the minister said.
