ICMR gearing up to conduct 4 lakh COVID tests per day

In order to combat COVID-19 pandemic, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is taking all steps to attain a capacity to conduct four lakh coronavirus tests per day, a government official said on Friday.

In a high-level Governing Body (GB) meeting of ICMR held on Friday, Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan who also holds the chair of the president of the apex medical research institute -- appreciated the 100 days of ICMR' efforts in the fight against the virus menace.

"The governing body meeting entirely focused on COVID-19 pandemic. Talks were on to strengthen our testing capacity, strong surveillance of contact tracing and proper treatment to an infected person. ICMR is making all possible efforts to scale up testing capacity to four lakh each day," said the official.

"Today, we have 1,000 laboratories (including private and government) which have ramped up our testing to at least 2.15 lakh per day. At the beginning of the pandemic, we were just able to do odd 100 tests per day," added the official.

In the GB meeting, the health minister also talked about the indigenous manufacturer of COVID-19 related kits. Till date, we have at least 122 Indian manufacturers who are supplying COVID-19 testing kits, said the official.

"ICMR advises all concerned state governments, public and private institutions to take required steps to scale-up testing for COVID-19. Since the 'test, track and treat' is the only way to prevent the spread of infection and save lives, it is imperative that testing should be made widely available to all symptomatic individuals in every part of the country and contact tracing mechsms for containment of infection are further strengthened," said latest advisory of ICMR on COVID19 strategies.

The death toll due to COVID-19 rose to 15,301 and the number of cases climbed to 49,0401 in India after it registered 465 fatalities and a record single-day spike of 17,296 cases till Friday 8 AM, according to the Union Health Ministry data.

( With inputs from ANI )