On the 27th of July, Prime Minister Narendta Modi launched ‘high throughput’ COVID-19 testing facilities at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) centres in Mumbai, Noida and Kolkata.
The launch event was organised through video conferencing in the presence of Dr. Harsh Vardhan, the Union Health Minister, Mamata Banerjee, the Chief Minister (CM) of West Bengal, Uddhav Thackeray, the CM of Maharashtra and Yogi Adityanath, the CM of Uttar Pradesh.
During the conference, Mr. Modi praised the efforts of Indian healthcare system and staff for fighting the Novel Coronavirus or COVID-19.
Despite the high number of daily rise in the Coronavirus cases and being the third worst COVID-19 hit Nation, India handling the situation is better than any other nation.
Considering the population of India, 133 crores, India has only 14 lakhs positive cases, of which 9,54,004 recovered.
Meanwhile India is also the world’s second largest manufacturer of Personal Protection Equipment (PPEs.)
The Prime Minister praised the nation’s achievement in scaling up production of PPEs, needed for healthcare professionals battling the coronavirus outbreak, calling it a “huge success story”.
Mr. Modi said, “At one point India didn’t manufacture a single PPE kit. Now it is the world’s second largest manufacturer. Over 1,200 companies are making PPE kits within six months.” He further said, “More than three lakh N95 masks are made each day”.
During the launch of the new testing facilities, Prime Minister Narendra Modi briefed about the labs and hospitals treating COVID-19 patients in India.
Mr. Modi said there are nearly 1,300 active labs conducting over five lakh tests per day, and that this would be scaled up to 10 lakh tests per day.
Mr. Modi said, “In January we had just one testing centre. Now 1,300 labs are functioning. It was very important to develop coronavirus specific health infrastructure.”
The newly launched ‘High throughput’ labs in three cities would be able to test more than 10,000 tests in a day, which would add up to existing number of tests.
Currently, India is able to conduct 5 lakh tests in a day.
Speaking about the new ICMR labs, Mr. Modi said, “These labs will not remain restricted to testing of COVID-19 but in the future will be expanded for testing of many other diseases, including Hepatitis B and C, HIV and dengue.”
As of now, India has 11,000 COVID-19 designated hospitals, 11 lakh isolation beds and 1,300 laboratories to treat the Coronavirus infection.
Stay tuned for further updates.
