As India continues to register a spike in COVID-19 cases, the states have been focusing on the strategy of ‘test, track, treat’ to contain the spread of the pandemic. Indian Council of Medical Research, ICMR, has continuously been working to ramp up testing across the country. With a growing network of over 1234 ICMR certified COVID-19 testing labs, the daily testing capacity has already surpassed three-lakh mark.
According to World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines, a minimum of 14 tests per lakh population is a must. India has been conducting around 17 tests per lakh population per day. Number of tests goes up significantly in the areas where more than 10% of the total samples are found to be positive. Due to ICMR’s guidelines and timely interventions, the recovery rate in India today is 1.8 times the number of active cases.
As many as 10 states are leading India’s relentless battle against COVID-19 with 50 or more testing labs.
ICMR has approved over 100 COVID-19 testing labs in Uttar Pradesh (138), Maharashtra (126) and Tamil Nadu (107) each while Karnataka (84), Madhya Pradesh (82), Andhra Pradesh (65), Gujarat (56), West Bengal (55), Delhi (54) and Kerala (53) each have fifty-plus testing labs. These are closely followed by Bihar (48), Odisha (46), Telangana (39), Rajasthan (35) and Jharkhand (32) as on 15th July, 2020.
ICMR’s effort seems to have been paying dividends as India’s testing capacity has gone up multi-fold in the last three months. From just around 4,000 tests in April, India has now been testing around three-lakh samples every day in July. On 15th July, a record 3,26,826 samples were tested across the country.
There are 2 indigenous candidate vaccines under development in India and they have undergone successful toxicity studies in rats, mice and rabbits. ICMR has submitted these data to DCGI following which both were put into early phase human trials. Since ‘test, track and treat’ is the only way to prevent the spread of infection and save lives until a vaccine is found, ICMR has been working to expand the testing base across the country. Right from establishing a testing lab at 18,000 feet in Ladakh to facilitating COVID-19 testing in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, ICMR is leaving no stone unturned to control the pandemic. ICMR has also been outfitting its labs across the country with state-of-the-art automatic COBAS sample testing machines to increase the daily testing capacity.
COBAS machines are high throughput automated COVID-19 sample processing and testing platform. This robotic machine reduces the risk of infection among health workers as it can be operated with very limited human intervention.