Challenges

Mitigation Measure

Unavailability of controls

Positive Control: use of a confirmed positive patient sample 

Negative Control: use water/universal transport media/viral transport media

Most methods are under development hence no validation data

Use methods with Emergency Listing (EUL) by WHO   Check https://www.who.int/diagnostics_laboratory/EUL/en/  and third party evaluated methods and perform method verification to the extent possible.

Unavailability of EQA schemes

Interlaboratory comparison with EPHI.

Travel restriction adequately implement onsite evaluations

Remote mentoring/supervision of laboratories by EPHI using Zoom or other web conferencing systems.