Shortage of Kits in Chattogram leads to fear of halting coronavirus tests

The stock of kits reserved for detecting the coronavirus cases in Chattogram has almost depleted, which has led the doctors to fear that running such tests will stop soon there.

It has been expected that all of the remaining kits will be used up by Wednesday to test the samples collected till now, so testing more samples will not be possible from Thursday.

The head of the Department of Microbiology at Faujdarhat Bangladesh Institute of Tropical and Infectious Diseases (BITID) Hospital Prof Dr Shakil Ahmed said that even though the health department sent 960 kits, they were not complete.

He added that they received the PCR components of the kits but not the extension components, so they could not complete the testing processes.

"A coronavirus test is done in three steps. We received the reagent for the last step as in the PCR but since we did not receive the reagent used for the preparation stage, we cannot use the kits," said Dr Shakil Ahmed.

He further said, "We do not have enough kits to test samples from Thursday. We have some chemicals from the old kits. We will try to run tests with that, but we are not sure if they can be used for testing."

Dr Shakil confirmed that they have already reported the matter to higher authorities who said they were arranging to ship the rest of the kits. However, it is highly unlikely that they'll get the kits by Wednesday.

Dr Hasan Shahriar Kabir, divisional director of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), said they have informed the health minister and hopefully will get the reagents soon.

According to the BITID sources, the organisation has already received about one thousand kits for coronavirus detection. One hundred of those kits were donated by a charity organisation in France. 

The rest were donated by various government and private individuals and organisations.