Kolkata: At a time when the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic is rapidly spreading across different parts of West Bengal, the state government on Sunday (April 19, 2020) accused the central lab - ICMR-NICED of providing defective test kits.
In a series of posts on micro blogging site Twitter, the State Heath and Family Welfare Department accused the ICMR-NICED for the delay in getting COVID-19 test results via the alleged defective kits.
“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 problems at a time when we are battling a pandemic. This is an issue that ICMR needs to look into immediately,” the tweet read.
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) April 19, 2020
The Department of Health and Family Welfare also claimed that the COVID-19 test kits provided by ICMR-NICED two weeks ago are throwing up ‘inconclusive’ reports hence the same samples have to be tested twice.
“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 test run for confirmation, thereby causing a delay in the generation of the final test report,” another tweet read.
The state government also alleged that till the time the test kits were being sent directly from National Institute of Virology, Pune there was no problem until the kits were routed through ICMR-NICED.
Issuing a clarification, Director of ICMR-NICED Shanta Dutta said, "Earlier when kits were required in smaller quantities they were imported, standardized and then distributed by NIV, Pune. But when the demand increased, ICMR imported the kits and sent them directly to the 16 regional hubs including NICED in Kolkata. The kits were then distributed to state run medical colleges where they were required to be standardized. But this standardization is not being done because of lack of time and technical know-how. That’s why sometimes these kits are showing inconclusive results.”
Interestingly, two weeks ago, the Director of ICMR-NICED in an interview had claimed that West Bengal was not conducting enough testing of samples and that the state was not sending enough samples to ICMR-NICED for testing despite having the manpower and infrastructure to test as many as 100 samples each day.
