Kolkata: Hours after the West Bengal government levelled allegations that they had received “defective test kits” supplied from Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED), Director of Kolkata-based NICED Dr Shanta Dutta shared a statement backing the government’s claim. It is “unfortunate that the kits are not standardized to give exact results,” the statement said.
Replying to News18’s queries on Monday, Dutta shared a statement by NICED, which said that this has been noted by ICMR as well.
“The initial NIV kits were assembled ones. The NIV had procured the primer and probes from US and then standardised the kit in their lab with other reagents and controls before distributing directly to other Virus Research and Diagnostic Laboratory (VRDL),” it said.
It added that when the number of the kit supply increased, it was difficult for NIV to cope up with the demand.
“Then, ICMR started procuring the readymade kits and supplied to VRDLs through 16 depots across the country. It is unfortunate that the kits (RTP-CR) are not standardised to give exact results. It is difficult for each of the medical college to standardise the kits, hence showing different and inconclusive results.”
The statement added that the matter is being "seriously addressed" by ICMR.
The issue came to light after Bengal’s opposition party leaders alleged that the state government is trying to hide the actual Covid-19 figures. They had also claimed that the government is not opting for rapid tests. However, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had not responded to these allegations. On April 17, during the chief minister’s press conference, state chief secretary Rajiva Sinha – who was also present at the briefing – hinted that defective RTP-CR kits had resulted in inconclusive results. But he, too, chose not to make any detailed comment at that time.
But after social media users criticised the West Bengal government for not opting for rapid testing, the state's health and family welfare department was compelled to respond to the allegations.
In a tweet, West Bengal’s department of health and family welfare, said, “Apropos a mischievous report circulating in social media about the alleged delay in the time taken in testing swab samples in West Bengal, it is clarified that 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/’confirmatory’ test run, thereby causing a delay in the generation of the final test report.”
The department added that there had been no problems earlier when the testing kits were being received directly from National Institute of Virology, Pune.
“Recently, the supplies to government labs in West Bengal have been routed through ICMR-NICED, Kolkata. This problem has been faced not just by Government labs in the state but other testing labs in the country, based on their feedback shared in the relevant user groups,” the tweet added.
The statement said that the “apparently” defective kits supplied by ICMR-NICED, Kolkata were causing a high number of repeat or confirmatory tests, leading to delays and other attendant problems at a time when the state was battling the pandemic.
“This is an issue that ICMR needs to look into immediately,” the tweet further said.
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