ICMR: Over 1 Million RT-PCR Tests For Covid-19 Detection Conducted In India, One Lakh Daily Tests Beginning This Week

In a significant milestone in its fight against the novel Coronavirus, India has completed over 1 million Covid-19 RT-PCR tests (Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction).

According to ICMR, a total of 1046450 samples have been tested as on 03 May 2020, 9 AM IST.

RT-PCR is the only diagnostic test for Covid-19 approved by the World Health Organization.

India is current carrying out an average of 75,000 tests per day at 419 approved laboratories across the country.

According to health ministry officials, India will be conducting 100,000 tests a day beginning next week. This signifies a quantum leap in the testing capacity as India was barely conducting 5000 tests a day in April 1.

Till March 31, as many as 47,852 samples were tested while till April 30, a total of 9,02,654 samples were tested for the novel coronavirus infection, an ICMR official said.

Among the 304 government labs, 254 use Real-Time RT PCR systems, 42 use TrueNat machines, and use Gene-Xpert cartridge-based nucleic acid amplification test (CBNAAT) for Covid-19.

Union Health Ministry and ICMR worked closely with 14 mentor institutions including AIIMS, PGI Chandigarh, CMC Vellore, JIPMER Puducherry, SGPIMS Lucknow, AIIMS Bhubaneshwar, which trained othermedical colleges, labs and hospitals in performing tests.

The Centre has been working with states tirelessly to ensure required reagents are supplied to testing labs in timely and calibrated fashion, enabling diversion of reagents to hotspots as needed.

The central government has taken on the responsibility of assisting the state governments with testing kits, etc., and they are also free to procure, and some of the state governments are also trying to procure their supplies, the government said on Friday.

The Department of Health Research has assessed requirement of manual RT-PCR kits.

As on Friday, material for about 16.4 lakh tests have been received. Against demand of 35 lakhs combined RT-PCR kits, more than 21 lakh kits have been ordered out of which orders for 2 lakh kits are awarded to the domestic manufacturers. Close to 14 lakh kits have already been received.

Top 10 countries in testing:

1. USA -6,931,132
2. Russia-3,945,518
3. Germany -2,547,052
4. Italy-2,108,837
5. Spain-1,528,833
6. UAE-1,200,000
7. UK-1,129,907
8. Turkey-1,111,366
9. France-1,100,228
10. India-1,046,450