Mobile van Covid-19 testing at KIA, results in 4 hours

To open up more options and accelerate Covid-19 testing in Bengaluru, a quicker option is ready to be unveiled at the Kempegowda International Airport on Thursday - mobile van testing. The vans equipped with mobile laboratories can conduct up to 2,000 tests daily.

The test numbers can be scaled up to 3,300 in a day. This could be decisive in an airport that sees over 40,000 employees and thousands of domestic passengers despite the pandemic restrictions. The test results will be ready within four hours.

While the Bangalore International Airport Ltd (BIAL) has partnered with Tata Medical & Diagnostics Ltd (TMD) for the vans, the testing partner is Aster Lab. The tests will be done at government rates, according to the project partners.

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Currently, eight such mobile laboratories are already in operation in the remote districts of Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. TMD has offered to work with governments and interested collaborators to build a fleet of 80 to 100 such mobile labs for districts.

This is in line with the mobile clinics launched by the state government in rural Karnataka to conduct tests at the doorstep for villagers. However, unlike the RT-PCR tests planned for KIA, only Rapid Antigen Tests are being conducted in these villages.

By the first half of May, the mobile clinics had covered over 900 villages and screened more than 32,000 people. Each mobile clinic is manned by a doctor, nurse, laboratory technician, and Asha and anganwadi workers.

COV-AID@BLR at KIA

For KIA, the mobile van testing complements the COV-AID@BLR, a 150-bed oxygenated Covid-19 treatment centre operationalised recently.

Located near the cargo terminals of the airport, this facility is open to the public and employees from the KIA ecosystem.

Patients can get admission at the centre by contacting nodal officers Sannappaiah: 9448116661 and Dr Sanjay: 9538279991.

The facility also takes in patients referred from other hospitals. The patients are required to produce their Aadhaar card, the prescription provided by the referral hospital and relevant medical documents.