New Delhi (NVI): Government and private laboratories across the country are gearing up to conduct tests for COVID-19, according to Indian Council of Medical Research’s (ICMR) official website.
A total of 157 labs – 121 government and 35 private laboratories – will be conducting the tests.
Out of the 121 government laboratoires that are approved by ICMR, 109 labs are operational while 12 laboratories are in the process of being operationalized.
In addition to this, the 35 private labs for conducting these tests are present various parts of the country including Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chandigarh, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Jharkhand.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has stressed upon testing during the novel coronavirus outbreak across the world. The Indian government claims to raise the capacity of testing for COVID-19 on a regular basis.
Earlier while addressing a press conference, Joint Secretary, Health, Lav Agarwal said, “There are 29 private laboratory chains, accredited by the Indian Council of Medical Research for conducting tests for novel coronavirus. These labs have 16,000 collection centers across the country, where at least 12,000 tests can be conducted per day.”
Agarwal also added ICMR norms will have to be followed by the private labs while testing for COVID-19. However, people who need to be tested have to fit in the criteria prescribed by the ICMR.
According to ICMR, the criteria include symptoms like fever, sore throat, runny nose, dyspnea, etc or individuals returned from affected countries like China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Iran, Italy or have had close contact with confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 infection, all individuals evacuated and quarantined from Wuhan, China and Diamond Princess ship, Japan and other coronavirus affected countries.
“The National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune functions as the resource center for the Viral Research and Diagnostic Laboratories (VRDL) network and is responsible for providing technical training for performing molecular and serological assays for virological diagnosis. NIV, Pune also performs the important task of standardizing assay procedures for the network as well as quality control and quality assurance activities,” the ICMR said.
