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Private labs to be allowed to test for Covid-19 but it won’t be a free for all
According to the ICMR guidelines for private labs, the private sector cannot run the tests without a doctor’s prescription which should have been given in line with government guidelines.
Accredited private laboratories could soon be allowed to start coronavirus testing facilities but they will be asked to absorb the costs and offer the service for free to patients, a top official of the Indian Council of Medical Research, or ICMR, said on Tuesday.
The first step screening test costs about Rs 1,500 while the additional confirmatory tests costs about Rs 3,000. The government doesn’t charge patients for the tests and wants the private laboratories also to test people for the highly contagious infection without a charge.
“This is our appeal to them,” ICMR Director General Balram Bhargava on Tuesday said, adding that some private laboratories who had approached them for approvals had offered to run the diagnostic test for free.
But it won’t be free-for-all.
According to the ICMR guidelines for private labs, the private sector cannot run the tests without a doctor’s prescription which should have been given in line with government guidelines.
Officials said ICMR would share the standard operating procedures for testing Covid-19 as soon as private laboratories procure the primers, probes and reagents as needed as per the guidelines.
News agency ANI quoted unnamed ICMR officials to indicate that the research body was in talks with about 60 private laboratories accredited with the National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers (NABH).
Officials suggest that one reason why the government hasn’t looked at private labs is because of the limited number of instances where testing was required. Till last evening, only 11,500 people had been tested for coronavirus, said an ICMR official. India has reported 137 confirmed cases by this evening.
ICMR officials, however, rejected criticism that the government might erroneously have concluded that the infection hadn’t moved to the community transmission stage and many Covid-19 positive cases may have been left out.
Dr Raman R Gangakhedkar, who heads ICMR’s Epidemiology and Communicable Diseases division, and Bhargava told reporters that they had collected 500 samples from different hospitals across the country to test if people, whose symptoms such as respiratory distress syndrome, had been infected with coronavirus.
India has limited testing to those who have traveled from affected countries or come in contact with a confirmed case and show symptoms after two weeks of quarantine. This is in contrast to the World Health Organization that urged countries to test as many people as possible to curb the pandemic.
ICMR officials said the large-scale testing was a strategy to be adopted only after it appears that the disease has moved into the community transmission stage.
