Nagpur: Following further decline in interest rates by the state government, some private laboratories in the city say they can only go for a home collection and stop the lab sampling that is not worth anymore.
On Monday, the state government limited the collection of RT-PCR sample houses up to 700 from 800 before and a collection of lab in 350 of the previous 500 in certain conditions.
Collections from hospitals, quarantine centers or test centers are charged at RS500, down by RS100.
The government aims to encourage more testing because the amount starts to fall.
Some Lab owners say only the price of reagents that have dropped while all overhead, including technician salaries, data entry operators, electricity bills, consumables and cost of biomedical waste have risen.
In accordance with government orders, expenses for all necessary consumables such as the VTM and PPE kit will be borne by the sample provider.
Lab owners say people think they are overcharged when the final costs of the test and consumables are communicated to them.
Dr.esh agrawal, Secretary, Vidarbha Medical Microbiology Association, said the revised level was not justified.
“They are not enough to cover the cost of kits, including chemicals, PPE, and other consumption.
In the end, cleanliness will suffer.
Quality and service may also be hampered,” he said.
Dr.
Agrawal agrees that some labs might plan to stop the OPD sampling.
“Those who have their own settings and property may be able to maintain in new circumstances.
But many rent rooms and tend to stop the collection in the lab,” he said.
Dr.
Agrawal added that there was still RS100 profit margin for diagnostic laboratories but too little to cover costs incurred in the process.
“Nagpur has around 35 labs only from 5 or 6 before.
The sample is also less today.
So many have losses.
The RPCR engine cannot be used for other diagnostic techniques except Sarscov2.
One lab set costs around RS40lakh,” he said.
The new RT-PCR test rate is low, some laboratories can stop the collection
