ISLAMABAD: The government is taking the issue of substandard COVID-19 testing quite seriously since it can further spread the virus across communities, said the Federal Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry on Friday.

“I have raised the issue during the last cabinet meeting and the government is taking serious steps to ensure the quality of COVID-19 tests,” Chaudhry told Arab News during a phone conversation.

“The quality of testing is crucial,” he added. “If virus carriers are declared negative for it, they may continue their normal activities and infect many people around him.”

Chairman of Balochistan’s Special Committee on Health Dr. Naseem Khattakzai told Arab News from Quetta that the provincial administration was working tirelessly to ensure the standard of tests and follow the guidelines provided by the National Institute of Health (NIH).

“We have sealed the famous Fayyaz Laboratory on Quetta’s Jinnah Road for conducting coronavirus tests earlier this week. The lab was sealed for illegally providing unverified COVID-19 tests for which it was charging Rs 6,000,” he said and appealed to the public that they should not to trust such laboratories.

“Balochistan Chief Minister Jam Kamal Khan has ordered coronavirus testing machines from abroad. At the moment, this test is only available in the TB Sanitarium at the Fatima Jinnah Hospital. That is where citizens are tested on a daily basis,” Khattakzai said.

According to the official statistics, there are nearly 2,500 confirmed coronavirus cases in Pakistan with 126 recoveries and 35 fatalities. The data also reveal that Balochistan has 169 COVID-19 patients so far.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged countries to test as widely as possible to curb the pandemic. “You cannot fight a fire blindfolded and we cannot stop this pandemic if we don’t know who is infected,” said the WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, two weeks ago. “We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test.”

Chairman National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) Lt Gen Muhammad Afzal informed Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday about the availability of COVID-19 testing kits with private labs, hoping it would reduce the cost of testing and increase the frequency of such examinations.

“Chairman NDMA briefed the prime minister that initially the authority had provided coronavirus testing kits to two private labs on an experimental basis to reduce the cost of testing. After analyzing the result of the experiment, these kits would be provided to another 14 private labs,” the PM office said in a statement.

The spokesperson for the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), Dr. Waseem Khawaja, told Arab News that the hospital was taking sample of those patients that the doctors recommended and sending them to the NIH for testing.

“We are facing an influx of patients who want to be tested for COVID-19. However, people should know that everyone does not require this test. There are many allergy patients who also insist on undergoing the coronavirus test, but our doctors decide who should take it on a case-to-case basis. We take samples and send them to the NIH since we do not have the testing kits at PIMS,” he said, adding that the WHO wanted countries to conduct maximum tests which, at this point, was beyond the capacity of most health care facilities operating in Pakistan.