Arun Kamble, is a seasonal farmer from Ekburjiwadi Village in Beed district of Maharashtra. Beed is a historical city of medieval origin, and home to several historical buildings such as Kanakaleshwar Temple and Mansur Shah tomb. Arun was suffering from fever from past two days and decided to visit the local civil hospital because he saw on TV that this could be a symptom of Covid-19. His sample was collected at civil hospital and sent for analysis to nearby city. It took 6 days for his result to come and by then he was already admitted to hospital. His result came out positive. Fortunately, Arun recovered completely but not all are as fortunate.

The second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic has started to spread in the rural areas – which is so much less equipped than urban areas to handle this pandemic. Testing facilities in urban centres are already over-burdened. The time it takes to send the sample to city and get result may stretch up to a week. Untested people would give infection to many more and the situation can very quickly get out of hand.

Realising that the delay in testing is the key, the government took this initiative to make the Lab Reach the People. By deploying the Mylab’s Hi-Speed RT-PCR testing lab, now the samples can be processed just in time without having to wait for days. The doctors at civil hospital can now isolate and treat positive cases very quickly and prevent the spread to family and to other villagers. The logistics for this van at grassroots have been supported by the CMHO and the district collector at Beed. The services of this mobile lab are run by Megavision Labs founded by Dr. Aelekh.

Built for Indian conditions, the van is now functional at the Civil Hospital of Beed. It has capacity to do more than 2,000 tests per days and can cater to nearby villages as well. There is an old Indian saying which was proven wrong with this – the thirsty need not always go to the well, it seems sometimes the well does come to the thirsty.

Lives will be saved.