Amid concerns that India is not doing enough tests to diagnose Covid-19 patients, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Thursday said currently it tests 24 people for one positive case, which is the highest in the world. However, India remained at the bottom of countries as far testing per one million populations is concerned.
“In Japan, to find one positive case, 11.7 persons are tested. In Italy that number is 6.7, in the US it’s 5.3, in the UK it’s 3.4. Here in India, we do 24 tests for one positive case. Not all are vulnerable to the virus. Hence, one can’t say that India is testing less,” said the Head of Epidemiology and Communicable Diseases at ICMR, Dr Raman R Gangakhedkar.
However, going by per million criteria, India is way behind, testing 199 persons in one million where as many other countries are testing over 20,000-30,000 per millions. The US and Spain are testing over 10,000 and 20,000 persons per million respectively and the UAE 77,000.
Switzerland, Norway, and France are also carrying out around 20,000 test per million populations. Bangladesh and Algeria are among some of the countries which are testing less than India.
The issue of testing surfaced when in a series of tweets and social media messages during the day, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi said that over the last couple of months, he has been speaking to a large number of experts in India, abroad, in Government and outside Government who have a very good understanding of what is going on, so whatever he says are based on those conversations.
“Lockdown allows time and space to put in medical resources: ramp up testing abilities, prepare hospitals, get ventilators. A misconception that I want to clear is, in no way does a lockdown defeat the virus, it stops the virus for sometime,” Rahul tweeted in one message.
“Our testing rate is 199/million and if you look at all tests that have been done it’s an average of 350/district,” Rahul said.
Responding to this, Gangakhedkar, said “2,90,401 people have been tested till date, of which 30,043 (26,331 tests done at ICMR’s 176 labs and 3,712 tests at 78 private labs) were tested on Wednesday.”
Working in one shift, more than 42,400 samples can be tested per day; if we work in two shifts, we will be able to test more than 78,200 Covid-19 samples per day, said the scientist, asserting that there was enough scope for expanding its testing capacity.
He said it had received 5,00,000 testing kits, including rapid anti-body kits, from two Chinese companies with 80 per cent sensitivity and 84 per cent specificity.
Rapid antibody testing kits (first lot of 3 lakh from Guangzhou Wondfo and 2.5 lakh from Zhuhai Livzon) and RNA extraction kits (1 lakh from MGI Shenzhen) have arrived for Covid-19 patients. However, he pointed out that Rapid Covid-19 test kits procured from China were not for early diagnosis will be used for surveillance and to monitor whether coronavirus hotspots in the country are increasing or decreasing.
Regarding concern over the efficacy of the rapid antibody testing kits, he said if an antibody test of a person turns out to be positive, one cannot necessarily be sure the person would not get infected ever again. “This means, even if antibody is present, that doesn’t mean it will necessarily be effectively able to fight the virus.”
“Rapid antibody tests are for monitoring surveillance, not for diagnosis. Hence there is no concern with respect to the testing kits being faulty, that concern was with respect to immune response alone,” Dr Gangakhedkar explained.
Earlier, the Government had announced that the rapid antibodies kits will arrive by April 8. However, there had been delays because of particular challenges considering the supply crunch and local regulations requiring registration.
Testing criteria in India were stringent so far and tests are being ramped up only now. Given the limited testing so far, it is too early to say whether India’s current trajectory will sustain, rise, or flatten in the coming days.