Private labs gear up with drive-thru COVID testing facilities as cases swell in national capital

Jun 26, 2020

New Delhi, June 26 (ANI): With a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases seen in Delhi and the introduction of new protocols by Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal and the Arvind Kejriwal-led government to aggressively increase COVID testing in the nation's capital, private labs too have scaled up their operations to aid in this fight against the coronavirus. One such private lab in Delhi has increased its testing facilities by establishing additional drive-through sample collection centers for COVID-19 testing. After collecting nearly 3,000 samples with the help of its facilities in Punjabi Bagh and Saket, Dr Dangs Lab has opened another centre near Siri Fort Auditorium in the national capital, in a bid to augment the fight against COVID-19. Dr Arjun Dang, CEO of Dr Dangs Lab, said, “Due to COVID-19 cases surging in Delhi-NCR, we started this novel initiative of drive-through testing and we've now established our third facility. Till date, we have done close to 3,000 RT-PCR tests, samples for which have been collected at these centres.” This idea of drive-through collections was first seen in countries initially hit by the virus, like South Korea and now are being seen in action in India as well. With regards to infection control measures at the centre, Dang reiterated that their facilities conform to all ICMR guidelines and the entire process entails minimum interaction between medical staff and patients. Also, patients are not required to spend much time to get tested at the facility.