As the country awaits the rapid anti-bodies kits, which the Government said will be made available by April 8, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in its bid to ramp up the testing capacity has approved the use of diagnostic machines used for testing drug-resistant tuberculosis for conducting coronavirus tests.
The ICMR has validated ‘TruenatTM beta CoV test on TruelabTM workstation’ and has recommended it as a screening test, the apex health research body said on Friday.
Issuing a guidance on the use of Truenat beta CoV, the ICMR said throat/nasal swabs will be collected in the viral transport medium (VTM) with virus lysis buffer provided along with the kit.
“Earlier studies have shown that virus lysis buffer neutralizes Nipah and H1N1 viruses. The results of stability of viral RNA after neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 by virus lysis buffer are awaited from ICMR-NIV, Pune.”
“Till such time, Truenat beta CoV test should only be performed with all biosafety precautions in BSL-2 or BSL-3 setups at laboratories,” it said.
The revised guidelines will be issued once the results from ICMR-NIV, Pune are available, it said.
A few days back, the Government had allowed rapid antibody testing in India and has also issued guidelines in this regard. The experts believe that it will help the agencies to enhance screening and identifying capabilities.
India has already purchased around 5 lakh testing kits from the United States, China and South Korea. However, sources in the Ministry said, these kits are yet to arrive in the country.
To ensure speedy detection of Coronavirus cases, those residing in COVID-19 hotspots or areas which have reported large numbers of cases, the rapid antibody testing was planned.
Presently, the government uses the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests to detect the Coronavirus from samples of throat or nasal swab of people with symptoms or high-risk individuals who might have come in contact with positive patients.
The rapid testing kits are quicker to get early results. They use blood samples of suspected patients and normally takes around 15-30 minutes to give the result.
Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary in the Union Health Ministry said, at the daily press briefing here, "There are 146 government labs and 67 private labs now. Earlier, we conducted 5,000-6,000 tests per day, but on Thursday, 16,002 tests were done. We are making 2.5 labs operational per day.”
He also allayed fears of a shortage of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) drug."We have a domestic requirement of 1 crore hydroxychloroquine tablets while we have 3.28 crore hcq tablets available now," he maintained.
Manoj Murhekar, Director, National Institute of Epidemiology, who was also present at the press conference, told the media, "A total of 144,910 samples were tested till 9 p.m. on Thursday from 103,792 suspected patients, of which 5,075 returned positive. We conducted 16,002 tests in single day. It (number of tests per day) has increased substantially."