THE government has established Covid-19 testing laboratories to prevent disease from spreading. The quarantine centres have been designated to check on suspected cases. However, no medicine has been discovered as yet to overcome the virus.

In these conditions, there is a dire need for speeding up the Covid-19 tests. Considering the trend of using university laboratories for Covid-19 tests such as Berkley University, we can also use university laboratories effectively for this purpose.

As authorised by the 18th amendment, the provincial governments and educational institutions can use university laboratories, because they are well-equipped, and have PhDs and highly qualified staff who are capable of doing the job. This way these university laboratories will not only help the government, they will be active as they are not being utilised for teaching purposes at the moment.

Apart from Covid-19 testing, the use of the laboratories will also commercialise them in future for the purpose of testing as is being done in the research institutions of developed countries.

Public and private sector universities have well-established chemistry, microbiology, physiology, biochemistry, biomedical and chemical biochemical engineering laboratories. These laboratories are upgraded through higher education mega projects one to four. The laboratories are also capable of conducting Covid-19 tests. Trained staff in similar fields can use the Covid-19 test kits easily after training.

The Higher Education Commission-recognised universities and their laboratories can form a channel to support the provincial governments through a task force led by a well-known professor of any of the universities. This will provide a better quality of testing facilities for coronavirus. This will also help universities generate revenues for the faculty and the staff.

Prof (Dr) Syed Farman Ali Shah

Ex-Pro Vice-Chancellor

Jamshoro

Published in Dawn, August 15th, 2020