The decision of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to approve 26 private pathological labs on March 24 to conduct COVID-19 tests is likely to expedite the sample testing process and ease the burden on government-run labs.
Out of these, Chennai-based Neuberg Group’s four labs viz. Neuberg Anand Bengaluru, Neuberg Ehrlich Chennai, Neuberg Supratech Ahmedabad and Neuberg AG Diagnostics Pune have been declared as approved centres for COVID-19 testing.
“As are group we are scaling up to do around 2000 RT PCR (Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction) tests per day to help ICMR increase the scale of testing soon,” said GSK Velu, chairman, Neuberg Diagnostics Ltd.
He said all pathological labs will have to follow the ICMR guidelines for sample collection, patient selection and reporting.
“Neuberg is the only pathological lab chain which got four of its facilities approved by the ICMR,” he said.
While the labs will follow the cap of ₹4,500 per test, Neuberg will to do the testing free-of-cost for deserving patients as part of its corporate social responsibility initiative.
“The results will be given within 24 hours in same cities where processing is done at Bengaluru, Chennai, Ahmedabad and Pune and within 48 hours if the samples are picked up from other cities,” he said.
Dr. Velu said samples will be collected at isolated collection facilities in many locations and through home collections by phlebotomists who will go with personal protection equipments. It is mandatory for a physician to recommend the test.
“As recommended by the ICMR, we will use approved RT PCR kits for conducting analysis in our BSL (Biosafety) 2 and 3 approved molecular testing facilities in these four cities,” he added.
