Hyderabad: Recently the University of Hyderabad (UoH) has been selected as a testing centre to scale up the testing capacity for COVID-19, as part of the many Testing Centres established by Research Institutes and Laboratories of Government Ministries and Departments, Universities, IITs, IISERs, and other Institutes of Eminence under Central and State Government.
The UoH will be carrying out these tests in a separate BSL-2 laboratory at the Center for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD). It has identified about 15 technical personnel from the School of Life Science, UoH for data entry, sample sorting, aliquoting, and coordination with other testing labs. As part of this, a batch of 8 technical staff has gone to CCMB today. It’s a one-day training, mostly on precautions to be taken while handling the virus They will be working at CDFD. This batch would be working during the late-night shift i.e. from 2.00 AM to 8.00 AM.
The cluster in Hyderabad consists of Center for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD); CSIR-Centre for Cellular Molecular Biology (CSIR-CCMB); National Institute of Animal Biotechnology (NIAB); CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (CSIR-IICT) in addition to UoH. The coordinating institution for Hyderabad is CSIR-CCMB.