ICMR increases testing capacity from 1 lakh to 2 lakh in 28 days

NEW DELHI: The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has achieved yet another milestone as the apex research institute has tested over 2 lakh samples in a single day, which is highest in a day since the first case of Covid19 was reported in India on January 30.

According to a senior official, the ICMR has strengthened its testing capacity and now 3 lakh samples can be tested every day.

Notably, the ICMR had increased its testing capacity to two lakh from one lakh samples in 28 days as the medical research organisation had tested 1,16,041 samples on May 27 and since then it continued testing over one lakh samples every day.

Surprisingly, in the last 28 days, India also added over one

lakh new cases of coronavirus as on May 27 the total count was 1,51,767 which rose to 2,56,183 cases on June 24. Besides setting a testing record, the apex health research body has validated the 1,000th testing laboratory to ramp up the capacity for detection of Covid-19 patients in the country.

“A cumulative total of 73,52,911 samples have been tested up to June 23, with 2,15,195 samples being tested on Tuesday,” the ICMR said. Of the 1,000 Covid-19 testing laboratories, 730 are in the ICMR network while 270 are in the private sector, which includes 557 RT-PCR labs, 363 Truenat labs and 80 CBNAAT

labs.

“However, in spite of these developments, access to testing still remains a huge chal

lenge in a large country like India. There is a definite need to increase the outreach of testing by introducing rapid point of care diagnostic tests,” the ICMR noted in its advisory issued on Tuesday.

However, the ICMR officials have hailed the efforts of their director-general Balram Bhargava for achieving the record.

“It's the committed efforts of the ICMR DG as he stood

like a wall behind all our over 8,000 employees and provided all the needed support on an urgent basis. It's a crisis time and all our ICMR employees worked tirelessly in coordination with each other to find out a solution of every prob

lem that they faced,” the senior official said.