After West Bengal, Rajasthan govt declares Chinese rapid testing kits 'faulty'
Jaipur/IBNS: After West Bengal, Rajasthan has declared the Chinese rapid testing kits for COVID-19 'faulty' and wants to return them back to ICMR, said media reports.
The Rajasthan government said that the Chinese rapid testing kits are not working despite following all the testing guidelines issued by the Central government.
Rajasthan Health Minister Dr Raghu Sharma has said the kits are failing to detect the novel coronavirus infected patients and raised the concern with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the reports said.
The Central and the state governments have procured a large number of rapid testing kits from China. On Friday, the Central government imported 6,50,000 kits and the Rajasthan government had earlier imported 1,00,000 rapid testing kits from China.
The Centre distributed the testing kits to the states, of which Rajasthan received 10,000 rapid testing kits.
However, the accuracy of these kits was found unacceptable. The Rajasthan Health Minister said a team of state's Head of Microbiology Department and Head of Medicine Department found that the accuracy of the kits is 5.4% whereas it should be at least 90 per cent, said the reports.
"We didn't leave any procedural loophole. We kept in mind ICMR guidelines for testing. Still, it didn't meet the standards, so we stopped the rapid tests. We've written to the ICMR that we won't conduct it as the accuracy is questionable. We're waiting for a reply," Dr Raghu Sharma was quoted as saying by Times Now.
The state health department said it conducted 1200 tests using Chinese rapid kits in Jaipur's Ramganj, one of the containment zones, but only two people tested positive. In order to test the accuracy of the Chinese kits, it also tested the infected persons, but they tested negative too, said reports.
The ICMR has said if the kits sent by the Centre are faulty then the Rajasthan government has to return the 1,00,000 kits it procured from China earlier, said the report.
Meanwhile, responding to West Bengal government's complaints on faulty rapid testing kits, the ICMR said it has made a temporary arrangement to handle the situation.
The West Bengal government has said it was forced to conduct multiple COVID-19 tests due to failure of rapid testing kits imported from China.
(Photo:UNI)
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