Debate over Chinese, Korean kits after states flag concerns

Hyderabad/Jaipur:

Hyderabad/Jaipur:

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After complaints of faulty Covid-19 kits prompted the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) to suspend rapid antibody testing for two days, a debate has started over the efficacy of Chinese and South Korean kits being used in the states to conduct the tests that are supposed to deliver results faster than the time-consuming Reverse Transcriptase-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) method.

While some states such as Rajasthan and West Bengal received the Chinese rapid testing kits imported by ICMR, states such as Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh on their own have imported the kits from South Korea.

Rajasthan and West Bengal governments have both complained about the efficacy of thousands of Chinese rapid testing kits, saying they were delivering faulty results after which the ICMR on Tuesday suspended the tests across the country. Only 6% of the samples that tested positive in the RT-PCR tests were found to have tested positive in the antibody test

Andhra Pradesh, which has imported 200,000 rapid testing kits from South Korea, has had no complaints so far. The state’s medical and health commissioner Katamneni Bhaskar, said as many as 10,000 samples were tested using the South Korean kits and there had been no complaints by expert overseeing them.

“The tests have been stopped following instructions from the Indian Council of Medical Research. We will resume testing after getting the nod from the ICMR,” he said.

Bhaskar declined to reveal how many of the 10,000 samples had tested positive and negative. “We cannot reveal the details without approval from the ICMR,” he said.

The health commissioner said the rapid antibody tests cannot be relied upon entirely to test whether a person was positive or negative for Covid-19. “It is only a screening test and not the final test to prove whether a person is Covid-19 positive or negative. You cannot take the result of these rapid antibody tests on its face value,” he said.

Bhaskar said the rapid tests had to be done only on people who were suffering from Covid-19 related symptoms for at least 10 days. “If we do rapid antibody tests before this 10-day period, there is a possibility that it may give a false negative result. The person might test positive in the RT-PCR, which is an authentic test,” he said.

The Rajasthan government, which was the first to say no to rapid tests using Chinese kits, said only 5.4% of the results of tests using the kits procured by ICMR were accurate. “The co-relation between the PCR test and rapid kit test should have been 90% but it was only 5.4%,” said Rajasthan health minister Raghu Sharma.

Dr S Banerjee, head of the medicine department at Jaipur’s SMS Hospital, and a member of the panel formed to check the efficacy of the rapid testing kits, said when an antibody test is positive, two bands appear on a test card after a drop of blood from the sample is put on it. If a single line appears on the card, the test is deemed to be negative. “In the tests they conducted, the kit did not show two bands even for (Covid) positive patients,” he said.

On Wednesday, West Bengal chief secretary Rajiv Sinha termed conducting tests with the rapid kits a “wastage of time,” alleging that the ICMR did not check the efficacy of the kits before sending them to the state. West Bengal has received 10,000 rapid testing kits, of which 220 were used.

Bhaskar refused to comment on whether the Korean kits were superior to Chinese kits.

“We have imported Korean kits and not Chinese kits. So it is not proper to talk about Chinese kits without using them,” he said. Special chief secretary (medical and health) K S Jawahar Reddy said recently that the state had preferred importing rapid antibody testing kits from a South Korean company because of doubts over the Chinese-made kits.

Because of the increase in demand from Indian states, the South Korean company SD Biosensor Healthcare Private Limited has set up a kit manufacturing unit in Manesar, Gurugram, having the capacity to make 500,000 kits, a statement from the embassy of India in Seoul said on Tuesday.

India is importing 500,000 kits from the South Korea, which are expected to reach India by April end. Some other state governments such as Haryana and Uttar Pradesh have also placed orders with South Korean firms for rapid testing kits. Purchase of rapid testing kits from China has been put on hold for the time-being, said ICMR officials.

There is also a considerable price difference between the kits imported from the two countries. A Rajasthan government official said the cost of a Chinese kit was Rs 600; a Chhattisgarh government official said the state had procured the kits from a South Korea for Rs 337 apiece.

(Joydeep Thakur in Kolkata and Ritesh Mishra in Raipur also contributed to this story)