ABSTRACT
Background:Pandemic situation of SARS CoV-2 has made every country to gear up quickly for the prevention, control and testing. Accordingly, India has developed the guidelines and policies and requested all medical colleges to establish the COVID-19 testing facility under the mentorship of ICMR and NABL. Methods:As we, at our college already having the central research facility, the urgent national need has made us easy to create a testing facility for the COVID-19. As per NABL guidelines to have the requirements, we have worked together with wholehearted support and active participation from Human Resource Department, Central Purchase Department, Dean Office and honourable management excellences. All the requirements like physical lab setup, necessary equip- ment’s with calibration and validation, dedicated biosafety cabinets, PPEs, biomedical waste management, UPS system, SOPs, quality consumables, trained manpower, entry protocol, working protocol, exit protocol, result reporting system made functional systematically. Accordingly, data generated and communicated to AIIMS, Nagpur and NABL, subse- quently auditing by NABL was conducted toughly and thoroughly. Results:Without NC we got the NABL Accreditation. On the basis of recommendations of AIIMS, Nagpur and NABL Ac- creditation, the ICMR has provided the login to us. Afterwards the lab started receiving the samples for COVID -19 testing. With minimum samples we started testing and reporting to ICMR, PCMC and State Govt. following all the bi- osafety measures and necessary guidelines compliances. Due to heavy load of samples in our state, authorities have requested to increase the testing capacity, so we have geared up accordingly by improving biosafety by using powered air-purifying respirator (PAPR), additional biosafety cabinets type II B2, weekly decontamination / fumigation of lab and necessary logistics and trained staff. Till now we have tested more than 6000 samples providing the results / reports within TAT of 24 hrs. We achieved 100% concordance for external quality control.