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Mumbai: Railway hospital to get a COVID-19 testing lab

The Jagjivan Ram Hospital at Mumbai Central, which is handled by the Indian Railways, is touted to get a dedicated testing laboratory for the coronavirus.

Mumbai: Railway hospital to get a COVID-19 testing lab
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The Jagjivan Ram Hospital at Mumbai Central, which is handled by the Indian Railways, is touted to get a dedicated testing laboratory for the coronavirus. As per media reports, the laboratory will have a capacity to conduct 500 real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests every day.

The RT-PCR test is a real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction which is a method of testing by taking a nasal/throat swab from a patient. It involves extracting ribonucleic acid or RNA, which is the genetic material of the coronavirus.

The laboratory which is said to be functional by November will be built at a cost of ₹3.2 crores. A tender has been floated by the Western Railways for the same. At the moment, even though the hospital treats patients suffering from the coronavirus, it collects the swab samples and sends them to the government-run hospitals in Mumbai for testing.

Earlier in July, amidst the spread of the coronavirus, the Central Railway Mumbai Division launched an App called the 'Check-In Master' for contactless ticket checking at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus in Mumbai. The app has OCR and QR code scanning features to check PRS and UTS tickets from a safe distance. Hand-held thermal guns were also provided for the thermal screening of passengers.

Additionally, Flap-based gates are to be installed at entry/exit with automatic QR-code-based ticket checking. This would be done in the next phase, to be implemented soon. The check-in Master App would be used for attendance and real-time monitoring of the ticket-checking staff as well.

Meanwhile, Maharashtra on Monday clocked 8,968 fresh cases of the coronavirus which took the tally to 4,50,196. The state further witnessed 266 deaths, including 46 in Mumbai, which took the fatality count to 15,842, according to the state health department.

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