The “dirty room” has just enough room for three lab technicians. But it is here, in the small room—also known as the ‘clinical specimen handling room’—opposite the Deputy Director’s office at Pune’s National Institute of Virology, that the process of isolating a nasty virus begins. The H1N1 virus, which claimed its first victim in India last week, has to be isolated from a deadly cocktail of nasal and throat swabs that arrive at this room. Lab technician Mahavir Rangole, who begins his day checking the labels on the vials, realises it’s a fight and so, doesn’t mind the “dirty room” tag to his workstation.

Besides the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in New Delhi, the National Institute of Virology is the only other nodal centre where government-certified labs can send suspected cases of H1N1 for testing. With the death of 14-year-old Reeda Shaikh in Pune last week, the city is panicking and the premier institute has been flooded with samples that have come in for testing.

In the last three months, the institute, a designated WHO reference laboratory for influenza research in the South East Asia region, has tested over 1,200 samples for the H1N1 virus. The 25-odd scientists at NIV have been working round the clock, studying the H1N1 strain that has been in circulation, testing samples and training virologists in a “preparedness programme”.

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By noon on Tuesday, Deputy Director Mandeep Chadda’s team has already reported about 20 samples that had tested positive for the H1N1 virus. The guard walks in to Chadda’s office to say that one more box of ten samples has just arrived from Bangalore.

... contd.