Sindh looks at WHO for Omicorn test kits

Private healthcare sector has already started the import of new testing kit

KARACHI:

Emergence of Omicron cases in Karachi has driven the provincial government to once again knock on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) door to seek virus testing kits for the new variant.

Meanwhile however, there are no public facilities present in Sindh that could allow for rapid diagnosis of the latest variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. Owing to this, detecting the coast city’s first Omicron case required the use of genome sequencing technique- a complex procedure that takes over four to five days to produce results.

The private healthcare sector, on the other hand, has already started the import of new testing kits for Omicron detection. Regarding which, health experts believe that a uniform policy for Omicron testing should be formulated and imposed on the private sector, citing that the public is likely to avoid diagnosis fearing high testing costs at private facilities.

In retrospect, even when Pakistan recorded its first case of coronavirus in late winter of 2019, it was the capitalism fueled private sector with initial access to testing kits. At the time, Covid-19 diagnosis facilities were only available a few private hospitals and laboratories that charged between Rs8,000 to Rs12,000 for a single test.

It was much later, when the government finally secured the enough testing kits, that access to rapid diagnosis was made available to the vast majority of Sindh’s population, many of whom live below the poverty line and cannot afford to shell out Rs12,000 for a lab test.

This time too, beating the public sector, a few private laboratories have already managed to import new virus testing kits for the Omicron variant.

Per sources, the kits are currently being analysed and experimented on, on a trial basis, to deduce their effectiveness. “The report of these experiments will come out in the next 36 hours,” the source informed.

According to experts from Pakistan Infection Control Society, Omicron diagnostic kits are available in other countries around the world. Using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique, which is essentially the same method used for diagnosis of generic Covid-19, this new variant can be diagnosed in 8 to 10 hours. “But the only problem is that its testing kits differ from the ones used in detection of previous strains of Covid-19,” informed a representative of the Pakistan Infection Control Society.

Speaking in the regard, Sindh Health Department Secretary Zulfiqar Shah confirmed that the provincial government currently lacks access to Omicron detection kits. “We have asked WHO to provide us with the testing kits. However, in the meanwhile, we all have to be vaccinated and strictly adhere to SOPs, if the new variant is to be kept from spreading,” he told The Express Tribune.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 17^th, 2021.