NEW DELHI: Taking proactive steps to ramp up the Covid-19 testing capacity in the country, the government has decided to allow non-accredited private labs — who apply for accreditation — to carry out diagnostic tests for the viral disease.
With the national test positivity rate crossing 10 — against the WHO recommended guideline of keeping it under 5 in order to contain the outbreak — low testing continues to be a major concern.
Dr Nivedita Gupta, a senior scientist at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), said private labs have now been allowed to apply for National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL) accreditation and in parallel submit their application to the ICMR to carry out Covid-19 tests.
“Private labs can complete accreditation in a month. As of today, a total of 1,132 testing labs are operational,” she said. At present, more than 2.6 lakh samples are being tested for Covid-19 each day.
“TrueNat and CBNAAT tests too have been deployed recently, in addition to RT-PCR and we hope to see a further rise by the use of the antigen test,” Dr Gupta added.
Rajesh Bhushan, Officer on Special Duty in the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, said India now has the capacity to manufacture 3 lakh rapid antigen tests per day. Ten companies have approached the ICMR for test validation.
Antigen tests are quick and cost effective but the ones validated in India have low reliability, so they have to be used along with RT-PCR tests, considered the gold standard for detecting the virus. As of now the antigen test kits manufactured by only one company has been permitted in India and is being used in containment areas and hospitals.
Bhushan pointed out that despite a population of 1.3 bn, India has been able to manage Covid-19 relatively well, as the case count per million is among the lowest in the worldHe added that India has 15 deaths per million population whereas elsewhere this figure is up to 40 times higher.
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