Unsafe sample collection adds to spread risk

Allowing private organisations that have employed staff with little training to collect samples from suspected COVID-19 patients in the absence of monitoring increases coronavirus spread risks and a sheer waste of public money, said experts.

The health services directorate is running a project under which it allowed two private organisations — JKG Healthcare and BRAC — to collect samples for COVID-19 diagnosis with volunteers trained online in few hours.

A third organisation also awaits the government green light to collect sample.

There are other organisations that installed mobile booths at many places around the country for collecting swab samples for COVID-19 testing and the health services do not know who they are.

‘I suppose the organisations collecting samples outside of the capital had permission from local authorities,’ said health services additional director general Nasima Sultana.

She did not have any clue about the environment in which the organisations were collecting samples of the highly contagious disease or if the sample collectors had any training at all.

In fact the short online training the health services directorate gave to volunteers working with the organisations collecting swab samples of COVID-19 suspects with permission is under question.

On Tuesday, New Age found some sample collectors at a JKG-Healthcare-run booth at Khilgaon while they were extracting nasal and throat swabs from suspected COVID-19 patients wearing only face masks and hand gloves.

The sample collectors stood less than 2 feet away from the suspected COVID-19 patients as they drew samples from them.

‘This is definitely the worst case scenario,’ Dhaka Medical College virology department head professor Sultana Shahana Banu told New Age after the situation was explained to her.

Such a situation provides an ideal environment for spreading COVID-19 through cross-infection, she said.

A COVID-19 patient could easily contaminate the surrounding environment when he sneezes or coughs or even breaths heavily and people nearby is likely to contract the disease, she explained.

The virus released by an infected person could stay viable on surfaces for hours and infect others visiting the same facility if it was not properly disinfected at a regular interval, she said.

Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research director Meerjady Sabrina Flora said that sample collection needed skilled manpower, especially while dealing with a highly contagious virus.

‘This is not a job that can be done by everybody. If one does not know where to look for the sample he or she might also end up injuring someone,’ she said.

Sample collected from wrong area might not contain the virus at all giving a wrong diagnosis of an infected person, she said.

The JKG Healthcare workers at Khilgaon were found leaving the collected samples to the suspected patients asking them to place them in a box kept in ambient temperature.

Virologists around the world warned that virus present in a sample might get killed in less than 24 hours if cold chain is not maintained between the collection of the sample and its test at laboratory.

The sample must always be preserved from 2 to 8 C, they said.

‘Wrongly collected samples also mean waste of testing kits,’ said Shahana Banu, who added, ‘This is a complete waste of public money.’

She said that the training manual followed by the volunteers online was rather appropriate for dealing with less contagious poliovirus.

Habibur Rahman, director, health services management information system, said that anybody is eligible to collect samples for COVID-19 diagnosis.

‘It does not need any skill,’ he said, adding that they mainly educated a volunteer on how to wear personal protective gears and from where to collect the samples.

JKG Healthcare spokesperson Humayun Kabir Himu said that about 200 volunteers, more than half of whom have no medical background, were collecting samples from at least 24 booths in six centres in Dhaka and Narayanganj.

He claimed that the sample collectors were provided with PPEs.

An International Journal of Nursing Science research published in April said that timely and safe sample collection needed specially designed sampling rooms, strict sterilisation of the entire environment, trained professional nurses and enhanced personal protection.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net