The Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation's own lab began functioning on Tuesday after it received approval from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to conduct RT-PCR tests. The state-of-the-art lab has the capacity of testing 1,000 swab samples per day.
Navi Mumbai municipal commissioner Abhijeet Bangar had announced that the corporation would work on a war footing to set up its own lab. It has been set up in the NMMC-run Maasaheb Meenatai Thackeray Hospital.
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On August 4, NMMC received the approval letter from ICMR to conduct swab tests. "As soon as we received the approval letter we started the functioning of the lab. The tests will be increased gradually, the lab can test 1,000 swabs in 24 hours. The lab is fully automatic, and after the COVID-19 pandemic it will be used to test other viral diseases, including HIV, and to do other molecular tests," said Bangar.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, NMMC had been dependent on government labs in Mumbai and private labs in Navi Mumbai for RT-PCR tests, which was time-consuming and a costly affair. Now having its own lab for testing will help strengthen its fight against the pandemic.
So far, Navi Mumbai has reported 16,679 COVID-19 cases of which 11,361 have recovered and 4,881 are active cases. Meanwhile, 437 deaths have been recorded.
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