PANAJI: In a continuing bid to shore up COVID-19 testing capacities of the State the Health Department on Friday installed a kiosk in the capital city where medics and trained technicians will be collecting throat swab samples of people with symptoms suspected of having contracted the dreaded novel Coronavirus infection.
The kiosk was set up outside the refurbished Primary Health Centre housed in the precincts of the heritage Massano de Amorim, in Panaji.
Health department officials said more such kiosks will be set up at select health centres across the State in the coming weeks.
The health department has also set up such a facility at the Mormugao port where the State intends to bring in thousands of Goan seafarers stuck in distress aboard ships across the globe amid the disruption caused in the industry by the COVID-19 pandemic chaos.
A full-fledged Virology Lab was also set up at the Goa Medical College and Hospital, Bambolim. The lab, manned by in-house talent of the GMC&H and led by Professor and Head of the Microbiology Department, Dr Savio Rodrigues, is equipped to carry out Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) testing.
While no officials either of the Health department or the GMC&H were willing to speak on record, a senior doctor told The Goan that the lab has risen to the occasion although it did face a few teething problems at the start and was virtually non-functional for several hours on the very second day of its certification by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR).
More trained manpower will have to be assigned and dedicated to the lab to shore up its capacity quantitatively as well as qualitatively, the senior doctor said.
