Accredited private labs to be allowed to test for Covid-19

NEW DELHI: In keeping with the demand for more testing, the Centre has decided to allow accredited private labs to test for Covid-19. Dr Balram Bhargava, director general of Indian Council of Medical Research – the country’s apex body for health research – confirmed this to TOI on Monday.

There are 50 to 60 private labs, accredited by the National Accreditation Board for Laboratories, that can do the test, Bhargava said.

At present, only government labs are permitted to do the test. Though their capacity is around 5,000 samples per day, only 60 to 70 samples are being processed daily. This is because current guidelines allow testing only for symptomatic individuals with travel history to affected countries or those in direct contact with an infected individual.


Asked whether others who are symptomatic but do not fit the current criteria could be tested too, Bhargava said, “All those who require testing will be tested.” This signals a possible shift in policy to relax the testing criteria.

The ICMR DG said the charges for Covid-19 tests in private labs and the modalities for reporting positive cases were being worked out.

ICMR has a network of 106 Virus Research and Diagnostic Laboratories (VRDLs) across the country. These labs get samples of influenza like illnesses (ILIs) and severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) regularly.

Scientists said 13 of these labs have been testing 20 random samples for Covid-19 periodically since February to see if the novel coronavirus had spread to the community. The experts said all samples have so far tested negative.

Monday onwards, the random testing of ILI and SARI samples – those exhibiting same symptoms as Covid-19 – has been expanded to 51 labs to more aggressively look for community transmission of the novel coronavirus. This would warrant testing people outside the current protocol — that is, those who may not have travel history to an affected country or who may not have come in contact with an infected individual. Community transmission is a stage when the disease starts spreading in the community in general.

The ICMR DG said random testing has clearly shown that India was yet to reach the stage of community transmission. “However, we have to be ready. That’s why we are constantly working to add more labs for testing,” Dr Bhargava said.

He added that nine additional government-run VRDL labs will be operational for testing Covid-19 from Tuesday, up from the existing 63 such labs. The new additions include VRDLs at Lady Hardinge Medical College and Army hospital in New Delhi and the one at Pune’s Armed Forces Medical College.

Bhargava said 70 other government labs — including medical colleges across the country and the labs run by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) — have been readied to conduct Covid-19 tests.

Testing for Covid-19 involves two key chemical agents, the primer and the probe. Primer can be prepared locally while ICMR has to buy the probes. Recently, the ICMR ordered two lakh probes from a German company to increase its testing capacity.

Also, sources said, some of the world’s top companies such as Swiss multinational healthcare company Roche and South Korea’s Seegene have submitted their Covid-19 test kits to ICMR for validation. “Once the ICMR validates the kits of any of these companies and gives a go-ahead to private labs to test, we can certainly join in,” Dr Arvind Lal, chairman and managing director of Lal Pathlabs, said.

He added that they have been involved in talks with government authorities on Covid-19 testing but there is no final word yet. “We have two major labs in Delhi and Kolkata where testing can be carried out. Sample collection can be done at over 100 centers across the country. We have done that before when the swine flu outbreak took place in 2009,” he said. Dr Navin Dang, who owns Dr Dang’s Lab in Delhi, also said he can start testing the day government gives permission.

The Covid-19 testing in government labs is free to the public. However, to the government it costs about Rs 6,000 to Rs 6,500. In private labs, the cost of testing could be much higher. So, industry experts said, the government may have to decide on whether to allow private players to charge as per their costing model or to subsidise the rates.