NATHEALTH's COVID private sector lab survey identifies opportunities to ramp up testing, currently at 30%

New Delhi: In a recent NATHEALTH's survey over 50 private laboratories across 13 Indian states were told to explore ways to enhance testing in private sector labs, the latest research stated the current testing scenario of India. According to the report, the private sector is still being utilized only at 30 % whereas the public sector is running at nearly to it's full capacity.

NATHEALTH is an inclusive institution that aims to help build a better and healthier future for both rural and urban India. It has representation of small & medium hospitals and nursing homes, committed to working on its mission to encourage innovation, help shape policy & regulations enabling the environment to fund long term growth.

The current testing capacity in India stands at 1.50 to 1.70 lakhs tests per day with the public sector capacity of 1.10 lakh tests per day and private sector capacity of 60,000 tests per day whereas currently India is conducting 1 lakh tests per day only.

According to the survey it was noted that the surveyed labs were working only in single shifts, doing cumulative 5,000 tests per day with 17 labs doing less than 100 tests per day, with a mere 30% utilization of private labs, they indicated demand flow as a challenge to enhance testing. A large portion of public sector is driven while private labs with support from central and state governments can also ramp up by increasing their testing rate 4-6 times more with double shifts. The current testing regime prioritized demand flow to public labs with only excess demand flowing to private labs.

There is a potential to increase the testing capacity by 6 times through better utilization and 2-shift operations in private labs can improve the existing capacity utilization by 80% by increasing the testing regime to 14,000 tests per day assuming 1 shift operation. Additionally, increasing shifts to 2 will increase testing by 30,000 tests per day. We need to act now with cases expecting to peak further by mid-June 2020.

Lab operators also mentioned the significance of the ground operational issues. As many as the 56% of survey respondents faced logistics challenges which can be solved by sample flow between districts & states to ensure better utilization whereas some faced difficulties with guidelines and procedures that can be solved by standardization of forms and simplified approval processes for sample collection and others faced pricing and commercial solution for which lies in expedited payments to tide over immediate liquidity challenges and consolidated procurement of consumables/ kits.

The respondents to the survey highlighted that support is needed across Central and State Governments to ramp up testing. The survey also indicated the three key themes that require intervention to ramp up testing and reduce COVID19 infections:

Coordinated Operations support

• Consider consolidated procurement to manage costs
• Standardize one data entry format across Center / State
• Streamline sample collection approval
• Single window resolution of operational issues

Demand flow

• Demand flow currently directed predominantly to public labs. Consider private labs as active parts of the testing regime rather than just overflow capacity
• Resolve inter district/ inter-state logistics and testing to enhance utilization
• Explore private labs for antibody tests in future

Liquidity and standardized Pricing Guidelines:

• On time payments for government directed testing to support cash-flow;
• Standardize NHA prices across states for testing for government directed tests