Facilitated 1,000 Covid-19 testing labs in India till now, says ICMR

Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said on Tuesday that it has now facilitated setting up 1,000 laboratories across the country for testing Covid-19 samples.

ICMR said that this is a major milestone towards enhanced testing in India.

According to ICMR, there are 730 government labs and 270 private labs for the testing.

There was only one lab for testing on January 23, 160 labs on March 23 and 1,000 labs on June 23, ICMR said.

It has advised all states, public and private institutions and hospitals to take required steps to scale-up testing for Covid-19.

ICMR asked them to deploy a combination of various tests which includes real-time RT-PCR, rapid antigen testing for detection of cases, and antibody testing for serosurvey.

"Since the test, track and treat is the only way to prevent the spread of Covid-19 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 mechanisms for containment of infection are further strengthened," it said.

ICMR said that so far 71,37,716 samples have been tested including 1,87,223 in the last 24 hours.