Mylab – Currently, the government is sourcing the Covid-19 kits from Germany and Switzerland to facilitate tests for diagnosing people infected with coronavirus across India.
On Monday, Mylab Discovery Solutions- a Pune-based molecular diagnostics company received commercial licence from the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) for its PathoDetect COVID-19 Qualitative PCR kit. Seeing the outbreak, Indian government has been making efforts to fastrack the validation process for SARS CoV-2 testing kits. The total Covid-19 cases surged past 500 across the country.
Currently, the government is sourcing the Covid-19 kits from Germany and Switzerland to facilitate tests for diagnosing people infected with coronavirus across India. The recent validation to Mylab and German’s and Switzerland Altona diagnostics brings hope towards ramping up Covid-19 testing capacity and reducing the supply shortage of kits.
Speaking on the urgent need to improve testing, Hasmukh Rawal, Managing Director at Mylab Discovery Solutions said, “The current government protocol involves screening and confirmation of the samples which take 6-7 hours whereas with these kits we can get the results within 2. 5 hours. The Mylab Covid-19 kits can test about 100 patients with one kit. An average lab with automated PCR can test more than 1000 patients a day.” Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) is largely being used to test the presence of SARS-CoV2 in the upper and lower respiratory tract samples of suspected cases.
“We can manufacture 10,000 PathoDetect COVID-19 Qualitative PCR kit per day (in 8 hours) and hope to release our first batch by Thursday,” Rawal further added.
Though the importance of testing for all symtomatic patients has been proven and emphasised by experts globally, India still ranks lowest in terms of testing done per million population which stands at 15 people in 1 million due to the limited availability of kits.
To ensure there is no shortage of medical supplies manufacturers have been identified domestically. Building self-sufficiency by increasing local manufacturing has been raised multiple times over the last few years. Local production is crucial as countries cannot fight pandemic by depending on imports of health kits and medicines. It not only impacts supplies but even the costs.
The Made in India Mylab PathoDetect COVID-19 Qualitative PCR kit would cost nearly one-fourth of the current procurement cost as it will be sourced locally said Rawal. Mylab kits will be priced around Rs 1,500 per test.
Recent steps taken to ramp Covid-19 testing includes 118 laboratories added in the ICMR’s network, 22 private labs getting registered, 3 PCR based kits approved by National Institute of Virology (NIV) Pune.
In order to break the Covid-19 transmission, complete lockdown has been enforced in India- a strict measure announced by Prime Minister Modi on Tuesday to ensure social distancing is practiced by all. South Korea has been a leading example of how coronavirus testing along with distancing measures has proven effective in containing the disease.
