Patliputra College and Hospital (PMCH) managed to clear its entire backlog of Covid-19 test reports in the last week after laboratory staff began working in three shifts as opposed to two, a senior official said on Wednesday.

PMCH superintendent Shailendra Kumar said the hospital has cleared a backlog of around 4,000 test reports in the last week. “As of now, the need is to conduct 400 tests and we have a capacity to conduct 600 tests. Therefore, we are back to working in two shifts,” he told The Telegraph online.

The district health department, sources said, had started using TrueNat machines to help in testing and detecting Covid cases from Tuesday.

TrueNat, the use of which was recently approved by Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), is an advance version of CB-NAAT. It is generally used to test tuberculosis. TrueNat is a battery-operated machine that can test two swab samples simultaneously. Reports are ready within two hours.

Three types of Covid-19 tests are being conducted in Jharkhand now. These are the rapid kit test, RT-PCR test in laboratories and Truenat. Rapid kit tests require blood for screening and later depend on RT-PCR test for confirmation.

At present, four RT-PCR machines of PMCH are being used for testing samples from 11 districts, namely, Dhanbad, Bokaro, Giridih, Koderma, Chatra, Deoghar, Dumka, Godda, Sahebganj, Pakur and Jamtara.

The TrueNat kit is being used for samples from Dhanbad. A sample that tests positive will need to undergo a confirmatory RT-PCR test.

Officials of Dhanbad were able to breathe easy as no new cases were reported on Wednesday. On Tuesday, the district saw 19 new cases, while on Sunday, 25 new cases were detected.

Dhanbad district has so far recorded 113 Covid-19 cases, of which 66 have already been cured, leaving it with 47 active cases. While 43 patients are being treatment at Jagjivan Nagar hospital in Dhanbad, four others are being treated outside the district.

The first Covid case in Dhanbad district was reported on April 16. He was an electrician of Baghakulhi locality of Kumbardubi police station area of Dhanbad and tested positive after he returned from Jamurai in Asansol in Bengal, Purulia where he used to work in a steel factory.

The district has also witnessed the remarkable recovery of 66 cases in phases. Two persons were cured on April 27, two on May 26, six on May 31, two on June 2, one on June 3, 37 on June 5, four on June 6 and 12 on June 7.