Exploratory study on the operational issues faced in collection, transportation, and laboratory testing related to COVID-19 in remote areas of selected EAG states of North East and East India

Background: COVID-19 ongoing pandemic has proved beyond doubt that all countries in the world from high income to low- and middle-income countries were unprepared with under-diagnosed and underreported losses of precious human lives on already overstretched healthcare delivery infrastructure. Thus, the urgent need of the hour is to understand and identify the operational issues and challenges encountered in the sample collection process and also at the testing labs in order to respond at the earliest. This early and effective response will help not only to address the identified issues in the whole chain of sample collecting to test result communication but also it will help to improve the functioning of the entire system involved in this process.

Objectives: The present study was undertaken to identify the issues faced during various steps involved in laboratory testing as part of the COVID-19 control activities in selected remote districts of North East and East India. Further, perceived adequacy of human resources, equipment, diagnostic kits, and other essential consumables including PPEs vis-a-vis the load of samples received from the catchment areas of the testing laboratories were also explored.

Methods: The study was a qualitative research using in-depth interview method to collect and collate the data from the chain of personnel involved in sample collection, storage, transportation, and testing by recorded telephonic interview by state-level collaborators as per the study protocol. The respondents were recruited from randomly selected sites of remote districts for sample collection, storage, transportation, and dedicated testing labs in six states of North East and Eastern India. The study findings were analyzed by two-dimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis to get the collective picture involving transcription, preliminary data scrutiny, content analysis, and interpretation of the verbal IDI; classified and summarized by triangulation; free listing and pile sorting of suggestions.

Results: The entire laboratory testing related human resources has been working on war-footing round-the-clock to fulfil the expectation of the stakeholders and maintaining high quality despite the ever-increasing load of sample testing in both the public and private sectors. The findings indicated that the healthcare workers from all levels of laboratory diagnosis have taken it as a challenge to control the pandemic even with limitations of logistics to capacity building. Positive suggestions to improve laboratory services were to increase human resources, infrastructure, IT with the robust mechanism of monitoring and supervision.

Conclusions: Upgradation of laboratory capacities and expertise in public health has become one of the points of concern to contain the COVID-19 pandemic of the new millennium.