India battles a coronavirus crisis and a testing problem
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Coronavirus crisis
As India lurched from one coronavirus case to another, it became the 17th nation to cross the 20,000 COVID-19 mark. The pandemic also claimed several lives across states, Maharashtra and Gujarat recorded the maximum 19 deaths each, taking their respective tolls to 251 and 90.
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ICMR cautions
According to a TOI report, on Tuesday, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) cautioned Indian states to stop using the rapid antibody test kits for the next two days till it examines their quality in the wake of complaints that they are not fully effective.
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Chinese kits
The kits had arrived last week after several delays and have been sourced from three companies based in China. In the first batch, some 300,000 kits arrived close to two weeks after they were due. On Tuesday morning, Rajasthan — the first state in the country to conduct rapid tests for Covid-19 — decided to stop using the kit any further as it was found that the results were inaccurate and did not correlate with the results of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test.
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Uncertain results
According to the ICMR, the companies which supplied the kits will be asked to replace them if the kits are found to be faulty. "High variations ranging from 6 to 71% have been reported between the results of the rapid tests and PCR tests," said Dr Raman R Gangakhedkar, Head of Epidemiology and Communicable Diseases at ICMR.
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Great divide
Even amidst a pandemic, tensions began to flare between the Centre and West Bengal. While the Centre alleged the state government had restrained the teams from making any spot visit, interacting with health professionals and assessing the ground situation, CM Mamata Banerjee shot off a letter to PM Narendra Modi to bring the issue of “breaking federal norms” to his notice.