H1N1: Lab to come up at PGI in a few weeks

The Health department has given approval to set up a laboratory to test samples for swine flu at the department of Virology in PGI Chandigarh.

Nodal officer for swine flu in UT,H C Gera,on Wednesday said initially 50 cases of suspected H1N1 flu would be tested at the department and the reports will be sent for cross-checking at the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD),Delhi.

The country has only two labs to test swine flu at present one at NICD,New Delhi and another at National Institute of Virology,Pune even as close to 200 cases have been reported in India so far.

The setting up of lab at PGI is a part of the Health Ministrys plan to set up 16 more labs across the country. The Chandigarh lab will cater to the patients of Punjab,Himachal and Jammu and Kashmir.

Even as no deadline had been set for the starting testing samples here,officials said that it will take a few weeks before the lab is operational.

Earlier one positive case and over a dozen suspected case of swine flu were reported from Chandigarh; all the samples were sent to NICD,Delhi,for testing.

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