Rapid testing begins as kits from China get clearance
Kits dispatched to six regional labs; first 52 tests in Raj turn out negative
nNEWDELHI:A batch of 500,000 rapid testing kits, which arrived from China a day ago, cleared quality checksindelhionfriday,asenior officialfromindia’sapexbiomedical research body said, even as Rajasthanbecamethefirststateto carry out the tests that are expected to widen screening for Covid-19.
The kits, which arrived after missing several deadlines, were being stored at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) main depot at the National Institute of Malaria Research in Delhi.
A senior ICMR official said on condition of anonymity that the kits were dispatched to six regionallabs,fromwheretheywill be distributed to local facilities to test people with fever, cough, and shortness of breath, predominantly in 325 districts that are currently unaffected by Covid-19.
“Thelottestingofthebatchwas completed today, and all kits were found to be of satisfactory quality. The consignment has been dispatched from NIMR,” said the ICMR official.
ICMR has identified six institutes across India for storing the kitsasitrequiresmaintainingcold chain conditions. Ten more institutes are being added as the numberofkitsbeingorderedrises,said the official.
One of the first states to receive the consignment was Rajasthan, which got 10,000 kits from Delhi, and all 52 people who underwent the tests turned out to be negative.
Chief minister Ashok Gehlot said 50,000 more kits were expected to arrive on Friday night andovernextthreedays.thestate government proposes to simultaneously continue tests using the laboratory technique called reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR).
Rajasthan plans to use rapid test for community surveillance and to scale up testing capacity to 10,000testsperdayoverthenext10 days.
“Therapidtestingkitsarebeing dispatched and being distributed among states that have high disease burden. The kits are being directly given to states and will be deployed or used by them as per their requirement, as long as ICMR guidelines for testing are adequately followed,” said Lav Agarwal, joint secretary, Union health ministry.
The health ministry, however, did not give information on the number of kits being sent to each institute or to which states and how many. The consignment that arrived from China on Thursday morninghas500,000antibodytesting kits and 100,000 RNA extraction kits. Of the 500,000, 300,000 are from Guangzhou Wondfo and another 200,000 from Zhuhai Livzon. The RNA extraction kits are supplied by MGI Shenzhen.
Stateswithhighdiseaseburden include Maharashtra, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and Madhyapradesh--allwithaninfection count of more than 1,000.
There are 170 hot spot districts and 207 other districts with clusters,accordingtotheunionhealth ministry.all other districts are in thegreenzone--whichmeansthey have zero or few cases.
“Therapidtestingkits,asihave been saying again and again, are not to be used for diagnostic purposes, rather surveillance purposes to know the disease prevalence within the community. That’s how these kits should be used,” said Dr Raman R Gangakhedkar, head, epidemiology and communicable disease, ICMR.
Rapid testing kits are meant for masstestingtodetectundiagnosed infections. “Rapid testing works whenyouhavetotestalargenumber of people in a short span of time,asitisquickerandcheaper,” saiddrtjacobjohn,formerhead of the virology department, Christian Medical College, Vellore, Tamil Nadu.
Apart from getting a share of the central pool, the states have also been given a free hand to procure kits locally depending on their needs. Andhra Pradesh received a consignment of 100,000 rapidtestkitsmanufacturedbysd Biosensors based in South Korea, which arrived on a chartered Air Indiaflightonfriday.chiefminister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, who was the first to get tested using the kit,tunedouttobenegativeforthe virus.