Siraha has shortage of COVID-19 testing kits

LAHAN: With the increasing number of people coming back from India, Siraha is facing shortages of RDT and PCR testing kits for coronavirus.

The district has a single confirmed case of coronavirus even though it lies in a vulnerable zone of infection.

Bariyarpatti rural municipality chairperson Santosh Mehata said people who are desperate to return to their homes are waiting along the Nepal-India border in the district.

Mehata said even as they are making them to stay in quarantine, lack of testing kits has hampered their work.

So far, 74 people were rescued from the border point in the district and quarantined.

“We were compelled to send 34 people to the Aruahi rural municipality and 24 to the Laxmipur Patari without tests,” he said.

According to him, they have demanded kits from the District Health Office.

Office Chief Bishnu Dev Yadav admitted that there was shortage of test kits to conduct RDT on people returning homes from India amidst the pandemic of the virus.

He added that though new comers were being made to stay in quarantine centers set up along the major border points including Bariyarpatti, Bhagawanpur and Nawarajpur, the test has been a challenging task in the absence of kits.

In the past one week, as many as 598 people arrived the border areas in the district and they have been put in different quarantine centers.

Meanwhile, the number of quarantine beds has been increased to 900 from 265 in Siraha district.

The isolation beds have been added in six major locations including Bairyarpatti, Bhagawanpur, Aurahi and Mirchaiya, according to Siraha’s Chief District Officer Saroj Prasad Guragain.