Close to a month after deciding to use rapid (antibody-based) testing kits for COVID-19 testing, the Karnataka government is yet to roll out the first phase of such tests.
Speaking with TNM on Tuesday, Dr CN Manjunath, the nodal officer for testing in the state, said, “We are mapping the whole programme regarding whom to use these kits for and we will be able to start within one or two days. We have so far received 12,500 kits from the Centre about two days back. Another 50,000 we are expecting by today evening which we (state government) has arranged. Another 1 lakh we are expecting tomorrow.”
Manjushree, a state health department official in charge of procurement for COVID-19 pandemic said that 1 lakh kits will be supplied by Wondfo Biotech and 50,000 kits will be bought from Zuhai Livizon Diagnostics. However, on Tuesday, ICMR had asked to hold off on carrying out rapid tests for two days after states like Rajasthan complained of inaccurate results.
Incidentally, a Singaporean company which was chosen by the Karnataka government to supply such kits in March end had failed to deliver the kits on time and the order was subsequently cancelled.
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) interim advisory with regards to the kits had only come on April 2. A detailed testing protocol for using these kits in hotspot areas was also released by the ICMR on April 17.
On the same day, the Karnataka government in a circular had said they had identified four priority groups for whom these kits will be used.
Group 1- a) COVID-19 hospital healthcare workers b) Non-COVID-19 hospital healthcare workers
Group 2 a) Government personnel in public contact b) Special groups in public contact like personnel in ration, milk shops, volunteers, delivery personnel
Group 3—-quarantined individuals
Group 4- a) vulnerable groups— 60+ year population and children
b) others
As things stand, many Indian states including neighbouring Tamil Nadu, have already started rapid testing even though Karnataka was one of the first states to decide on this.
Speaking earlier on this, officials had said that while legacy tests at least take 7-8 hours for results to come, using these kits, doctors can get results within 15 minutes by drawing a blood sample from a patient’s finger with a pin prick. The cost of the devices are also roughly about 25% of the conventional tests.
Further officials said following the ICMR protocols, every patient will be declared COVID-19 positive only after they test positive via the legacy testing even if they test positive in the antibody testing.
Editor's note: An earlier version of this story had erroneously stated that the kits supplied by a Singapore company had not been approved by ICMR. The error is regretted.