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Covid-19: 10,000 rapid testing kits found faulty in Bengal; Mamata lashes out at Centre
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has said that a deliberate attempt was being made to malign the state, while all kinds of testing kits, including rapid testing kits and RT-PCR kits are being withdrawn or they are in short supply.
All the 10,000 rapid test kits, supplied to West Bengal by the Indian Council of Medical Research, have been found faulty, even as some components of the RT-PCR are in short supply, resulting in the low rate of Covid-19 tests, a top official of the state administration said on Wednesday.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has said that a deliberate attempt was being made to malign the state, while all kinds of testing kits, including rapid testing kits and RT-PCR kits are being withdrawn or they are in short supply.
“All 10,000 rapid test kits supplied to Bengal have been found to be faulty. We conducted 220 tests with these kits. We are lucky that we didn’t proceed earlier with these kits. It was a complete waste of time and energy. ICMR should have tested the veracity of the kits before sending,” Rajiva Sinha, chief secretary of West Bengal said.
In all, 7037 tests have been done in Bengal with RT-PCR kits. But two components of the RT-PCR test kits - Viral Transport Medium (VTM) and RNA extraction machine –are in short supply.
“Only 3456 RNA extractors and 2500 VTM were supplied by ICMR. To conduct 7000 tests, 14000 VTMs were required. If we had depended solely on ICMR, we wouldn’t have been able to conduct 7037 tests. We had to make our own arrangements. While supply was scarce we were being blamed for low tests,” Sinha said.
Banerjee lashed out at the Centre alleging kits were coming in short supply and defective kits were being supplied to the state.
“Rapid test kits are being withdrawn because of their defects. The other kits too are either in short supply or have been found to be defective and are being withdrawn. I am not being able to understand the Centre’s plan. Patients will die if not tested. Who will be responsible?” she said.
HT had earlier reported that the ICMR-NICED has already decided to replace the apparently defective RT-PCR kits in medical colleges across the state.
“ICMR has decided to replace the kits which, some states claimed, were yielding inconclusive results. These kits were supposed to be standardized by the medical colleges and kept in -20 degrees Celsius without which they would give inconclusive results. It appears that the state-run medical colleges neither standardized the kits nor did they maintain the right temperature. But as the tests need to go on these will now be replaced by kits from the National Institute of Virology in Pune,” Shanta Dutta, Director of the National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases in Kolkata, had said on Tuesday.
