Rajasthan stops rapid testing, Health Min says accuracy of ICMR testing kit 'questionable'

Following West Bengal's claims of 'faulty testing kits' being provided by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the Rajashtan government now has reiterated the same. Rajasthan Health Minister Raghu Sharma has stated that the accuracy of the COVID-19 rapid testing kits provided by ICMR was supposed to be 90% but has been found to be just 5.4%. Consequently, the Health Minister stated that it will not conduct any more rapid tests for the Coronavirus and has written to the ICMR about the same.

Health Minister Raghu Sharma stated that the government had formed a committee with the Head of the state's Microbiology Department and chief of the Medicine department to check if the tests are effective.

He added that ICMR guidelines for testing were followed and since it did not meet the standards, so the state has stopped rapid tests. "We've written to ICMR that we won't conduct it as the accuracy is questionable. We're waiting for a reply," Sharma said. 

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So far, 1576 positive COVID cases have been reported in Rajasthan with 205 of them recovering from the disease. 25 deaths have also been reported in the state due to the pandemic.

READ | 'West Bengal Govt Trying Hard To Turn Covid-19 Red Zones Into Green Zones': Med Expert 

Bengal pins delay on ICMR

Earlier, the West Bengal Health and Family Welfare Department had accused ICMR-NICED of providing defective testing kits to the state government which has led to a delay in providing results of COVID-19 suspects. In a series of tweets on Sunday, the Health Department had alleged that testing kits supplied by the ICMR-NICED about two weeks ago has started to show a large number of 'inconclusive results.' The department also reasoned that the testing kits which were received by the National Institue of Virology, Pune did not depict such a problem. 

Following the allegations, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)'s Dr Gangakhedkar, on Monday, had said that these tests were to know the trend of the spread of the virus. He had also refuted West Bengal's claim of 'faulty test kits provided by ICMR', explaining that the test kits had to be stored under 20 deg celsius. "In West Bengal, some RTPCR kits not working is what we have been informed. There is only one problem that the kits should be kept under 20-degree Celsius, otherwise, results may not be correct. We have informed the WB govt that NIV kits are capable to conduct 10,000 tests," he said. 

READ | ICMR Refutes Bengal Govt's Claim On 'faulty Test Kits', Affirms Anti-body Tests For Survey