Confirmation rate low, district hospital to get samples re-checked by NIB

NOIDA: After CAG suggested that Delhi might be under-reporting chikungunya cases, even Noida has become conscious of the fact that not enough cases of vector-borne diseases are getting confirmed even as hundreds of patients were reporting symptoms like fever, joint pain. The district hospital, Sector 30, has sent 90 blood samples of patients from Noida and other regions in NCR to the National Institute of Biologicals (NIB), Sector 62.Till now, only 56 cases of chikungunya have been confirmed in Noida, out of which 46 pertain to patients from Noida. However, only 18 dengue cases have been confirmed in the district, out of which 12 are from Gautam Budh Nagar and six from other districts.
“We wanted to have a quality assessment of the kits we are using and hence decided to send 90 blood samples of suspected cases of dengue and chikungunya to the NIB, which is an authorised centre of Government of India. It will help cross-check our results,” Dr HM Lavania, pathologist of district hospital, Sector 30 told TOI. All the cases where chikungunya and dengue are suspected are sent to the district hospital for confirmation of dengue and chikungunya. Between Monday and Tuesday, 52 samples were checked for dengue and 41 for chikungunya. However, none of the samples were found to be positive.
Hospital authorities said that between 70- 90 samples are being checked but the rate of confirmation is very low. Last year, the rate was between 30-40%. The Elisa kits come at the hospital from NIV (National Institute of Virology), Pune. “The MEC elisa kits are considered more reliable than the rapid tests. But, since we are witnessing low rate of confirmation, we felt that it is better to get these cases re-confirmed,” Lavania said.
In the neighbouring Ghaziabad, the confirmed cases of chikungunya have reached 427 and 212 in dengue.