Updated April 20th, 2020 at 07:54 IST
Bengal pins COVID-19 testing delays on 'defective kits' from ICMR, urges immediate probe
After being on receiving end of criticisms for a low testing rate in West Bengal, the state has accused the ICMR-NICED of providing it with faulty testing kits
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After being on the receiving end of the criticisms for a low testing rate in the state, the Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government has now put the onus on the Indian Council of Medical Research-National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (ICMR-NICED) for the state's low testing capacity by saying that ICMR-NICED supplied defective COVID-19 test kits.
The state's health department in a series of tweets has accused the ICMR and said that there was no problem when the testing kits were procured from the National Institute of Virology, Pune but the problems surfaced when they started receiving kits from ICMR.
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1/5 Apropos a mischievous report circulating in social media about the alleged delay in the time taken for testing swab samples in West Bengal, it is clarified that:
— Department of Health & Family Welfare, West Bengal (@wbdhfw)
2/5 The testing kits supplied by ICMR-NICED about two weeks ago have started to throw up a large number of ‘inconclusive’ results, necessitating a repeat/ ‘confirmatory’ test run, thereby causing a delay in the generation of the final test report.
— Department of Health & Family Welfare, West Bengal (@wbdhfw)
3/5 There was no problem earlier when the testing kits were being received directly from National Institute of Virology, Pune. Recently, the supplies to Government Labs in West Bengal have been routed through ICMR-NICED, Kolkata.
— Department of Health & Family Welfare, West Bengal (@wbdhfw)
4/5 This problem has been faced not just by Government labs in the State but other testing labs in the country, based on their feedback shared in the relevant user groups.
— Department of Health & Family Welfare, West Bengal (@wbdhfw)
5/5 The apparently defective test kits supplied by ICMR-NICED, Kolkata are resulting in a high number of repeat/ confirmatory tests and causing delays and other attendant problems at a time when we are battling a pandemic. This is an issue that ICMR needs to look into immediately
— Department of Health & Family Welfare, West Bengal (@wbdhfw)
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This accusation seems to be in response to NICED which is a nodal testing facility of ICMR in Kolkata. At the beginning of last week, ICMR had said that the state government is not sending enough samples for COVID-19 testing. Dr Shanta Dutta, Director, ICMR-NICED had said that there was a big drop in the number of samples sent by the government. "If they send more samples, we are able to test more. I think sample collection has not been as per the recommendation. So number tests being done in Bengal is also less,” Dr Dutta had said.
The row
As COVID-19 continues to grip the country and the world, a major row erupted has in West Bengal, with many in the medical fraternity and opposition parties saying that the state was reporting fewer cases as only a minuscule of the population is getting tested for the deadly virus. The state has reported 310 cases of Coronavirus, while 12 of them have succumbed to the virus.
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Published April 20th, 2020 at 07:54 IST