Private diagnostics laboratories here may be ready to conduct tests for COVID-19 in under a week, heads of some laboratories said on Monday.
Diagnostic laboratories, accredited with by the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL) and with real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) capabilities would be allowed to carry out such tests said, Ravi Gaur, CEO of Oncquest laboratories in Safdarjung, one such laboratory in Delhi.
To this end, Dr. Gaur said, his laboratory, just as several others was waiting to receive a licence or registration number for testing, from the government. The license number is crucial said, Dr. Arjun Dang, of Dang labs, another facility which is said to have the capacity to test for COVID-19. The number will be a proof of authenticity of any test report put out by the laboratory.
However, after the labs receive the licences, they are required to follow some steps till the testing can be started. Among these, include ICMR-NIV, validating which, test kits can be used to carry out the test. While only two such test kits were initially being allowed, which had been approved by the US FDA or by the EU CE, use of more test kits is also being validated, doctors said.
Once these kits are approved by the ICMR, they will be procured by laboratories depending on their requirement and then have to go through another set of “validation tests”, they said. This would involve procuring a positive control sample of the virus, to use on the test kits to make sure that they work, said Dr. Dang. Procuring of such a sample would have to be done either through government hospitals or via vendors, he added. If the kits procured by the lab produces the same result as that produced by the ICMR and passed any other validation test as required by the lab, they would be ready for use.
150 tests in a day
Oncquest labs has already procured kits approved by the ICMR, said Dr. Gaur, addin that it would be ready for conducting tests within two to three days after they received their registration number. About 150 such tests could be carried out in one day he added.
In the meantime, laboratories are undertaking training and re-training of their staff to ensure all safety precautions are undertaken. These relate to use of protective gear, disposal, sample collection and related activities. At at least these two laboratories, doctors said, samples would only be collected at home or be given from hospitals.
While many believe there was a need to start the conduction of tests soon, Dr. Dang said that they would begin operations only when they were absolutely sure of safety precautions and quality of the tests. Any sort of lack in these terms could mean reports turning out as false negatives or false positives, which could put more people at risk, he said.
