New Delhi May 2:India achieved a major milestone on Saturday of conducting one million RT-PCR tests so far to detect coronavirus, an official of the empowered committee that is tracking India’s Covid-19 response said.
“Today, India crossed one million RT- PCR tests… a great achievement in this lockdown period,” he said.The milestone came on a day when the number of Covid-19 cases in the country climbed to 37,776 and casualties rose to 1,223. A total of 10,017 have recovered from the deadly infection.
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has ramped up testing to more than 75,000 samples per day.“Now there are 419 labs testing for coronavirus in the country. There are 14 mentor institutions like AIIMS, PGI Chandigarh, CMC Vellore, JIPMER Puducherry, SGPIMS Lucknow, AIIMS, Bhubaneswar, etc holding hands of these medical colleges/ labs/ hospitals in carrying out tests,” the official said.
There are 15 institutions spread in the country working as depots for supplying testing kits/ material to these labs in the country.He said sourcing material/ testing kits/ regents/ chemicals/ equipment is a herculean task and that the government has engaged Indian missions in foreign countries to source material.A number of ICMR labs/ institutes testing/ evaluating these kits/ testing material.Lots of Indian companies are coming up with their products to be used in testing, the official said.The country has been importing testing kits from China and South KoreaLast month, the ICMR had asked states to put on hold for two days antibody testing for Covid-19 using rapid testing kits or RTKs citing huge variations in the results
