The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) have invited applications from government and private medical colleges to begin testing facilities for COVID-19.

Laboratories which are applying to the ICMR should have infrastructure and proficiency. It should include the availability of a biosafety level-2 laboratory with a molecular biology set-up for virological diagnosis. And also a functioning and calibrated biosafety cabinet type 2A/2B. The laboratories should have a cold centrifuge for RNA extraction with a functional and calibrated real-time PCR machine.

The applicants should make sure the availability of staff members such as medical microbiologists with work experience in molecular virology. There should be at least 4-6 technicians so as to work in shifts.

Private laboratory applicants should submit a copy of NABL-accreditation certificate and opportunity of accreditation for real-time PCR for RNA viruses. As per the ICMR, applications should be accompanied with infrastructure pictures of the laboratory.

The ICMR will start identifying government and private laboratories, research institutes and medical colleges that have the capability and infrastructure to carry out coronavirus testing and include them in the COVID-19 testing network.

The laboratories should have personal protective equipment, reagents, probes, primers, hand sanitizers and a list of other things.

As the coronavirus cases are increasing, the ICMR has prepared a worst case scenario road map for testing. Almost 200 laboratories has been geared up for round-the-clock testing. ICMR is focusing on the interventions to scale up capacity to 1 lakh testing in a day in the upcoming months.

At present, the government has been facing a lot of criticism for its low testing strategy. On Monday, the ICMR said it had already scaled up testing by approving more than 200 public and private laboratories for coronavirus testing through RT-PCR machines. The ICMR is also looking into other interventions such as moving to 24x7 working model in current labs.

ICMR is coordinating with all the states to increase their manpower for functioning. It includes data-entry and re-deploying the manual and automated RT-PCR machines.

Source: ET Healthworld