As of March 27th, 2020, India, the largest democracy in the world where the coronavirus outbreak is on the rise, had tested only 26,798. Out of the tested samples, over 1,000 are confirmed positives whereas 26 have lost their lives battling the COVID-19 disease.
When the numbers of India were made public, many across the country lauded the effort to contain the outbreak while it was only because of the rate of testing. The rate of testing has been slow as India has fallen short of testing kits. For example, West Bengal is reported to have only 40 testing kits for the entire state.
The reason for the shortage of tests
There is a global shortage of testing kits as every country is on the race to produce more and thereby contain the outbreak. The director of the World Health Organisation, Dr. Tedros too mentioned that while a lockdown will only buy more time, conducting more tests and isolating positive cases is the only way to stop the epidemic.
The flight restrictions because of the lockdown have limited the imports of testing kits within the country. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had earlier stated that only those kits with FDA or European CE certification will be permitted which effectively cut out Indian manufacturers who were ready to develop the kits. Take Trivitron, the Indian company which has sold 5 lakh test kits to China, is yet to receive approval from the government.
Soon afterward, ICMR changed the protocol and allowed test kits that are validated by the National Institute of Virology, Pune.
The way forward
Up until March 20th, the shortage of kits went hand in hand with the testing protocol as only symptomatic people with travel history or primary contacts were tested. Since then the protocol has been changed and India suddenly has a huge demand for testing kits.
Recently, Pune based MyLab become the first Indian company to receive approval to manufacture testing kits. As per the claim of MyLab, their tests will bring down the diagnosis time to 2.5 hours from the current time of 6-7 hours. Economically too, their tests are priced at 1,200 rupees. The NIV and ICMR have approved a total of 14 testing kits.
Trivitron that had earlier supplied to China is expected to produce up to 75,000 kits per day. CoSara, another company, said that it can produce 10,000 tests per day. Apart from this, the government has also increased the testing laboratories with private players coming in.
