Responding to the government requirement to enhance the PCR testing capacity of the country Asian Development Bank has assisted to establish PCR Laboratory at Colombo East Base Hospital as a total solution in May 2020.
The project was included with many activities such as construction of the infrastructure with dedicated utility services, supply of all medical equipment needed to perform 500 tests in 12 hours, reagents and consumables to perform 30000 tests, laboratory and office furniture, alternative power supply and construction of access road to the laboratory. The total cost of the project was LKR 246 Mn. Since then laboratory was functioning well and has performed more than 1000 tests in some days depending on the number of samples received.
It has been reported that one of the automated machines (Automated Nuclear Acid Extractor) used in this process went out of order for one week due to an issue of stability of the same. Although this machine was out of order the laboratory continues functioning adopting the manual method of Nuclear Acid Extraction as many of the PCR laboratories in the country. During last few days the laboratory has performed 200 to 300 tests per day.
At the moment, stability issue of the furniture used for the machine has been identified and will be attended today.
The information about 20000 samples are held up in the laboratory without performing the PCR test is not correct. Due to the large sample storage capacity of this laboratory, samples from many areas of the country are been sent to the laboratory for storage and those are been distributed to other laboratories of the country depending on their capacity to perform PCR tests next morning. Therefore, there is no accumulation of samples even for storage.