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Dimapur, July 27 (EMN): The BSL-2 laboratory that was set up at the Christian Institute Health Sciences and Research (CIHSR) in Dimapur by the government of Nagaland has run out of reagents for testing swab samples.
Speaking to Eastern Mirror, the medical superintendent of CIHSR, Dr. Clement Momin, informed that the first stock of reagents provided by the government had been exhausted, with around 2000 Covid-19 tests conducted till date.
Asked when the reagent would be available as testing in Dimapur has been temporarily halted, Momin informed that as of now, the government has not given any update. He however said that some reagents ‘might come tomorrow’ (July 27) but could not guarantee it.
The official also informed that the main problem is that the supply comes from Guwahati in Assam and the supplier as well as the shipping agency have been closed for business due to Covid-19.
The medical superintendent also informed that it’s been more than a week since the BSL-2 lab stopped testing for Covid-19. He appealed to the government to ‘work it out as soon as possible in order to run the laboratory’.
When queried about the confirmation of RT-PCR test result of the patient who had tested positive for Covid-19 via TrueNat on July 25, he informed that the result is still awaited since there is a lot of backlog of tests at the BSL-3 laboratory in Kohima.
The CIHSR had trained 10 technical staff to run the BSL-2 laboratory, according to a source. Initially, around 200 patients were being tested per day, free of cost.