NEW DELHI: With states complaining that the recently acquired rapid testing kits were delivering misleading and inaccurate results, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Tuesday advised all states to stop using the antibody test for Covid-19 for two days until its teams investigated the functioning of the kits.
The council said it was investigating the issue as some states had reported huge variations — ranging between 6% and 71% — in test results from rapid antibody kits which it said was unacceptable and may need to be replaced, which will be a setback to the government’s plan to use rapid tests for surveillance and tracking trends, though not for diagnostics.
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. This also triggered a reaction across the country with many other states discontinuing the testing.
In a tweet late on Tuesday, Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot said: “I had earlier suggested to GOI (government of India) that a centralised mechanism with proper guidelines of quality check may be developed for the procurement of medical equipment. Unfortunately this was not accepted. Had this suggestion been accepted, failure of Rapid Test kits could have been avoided. We have written to ICMR for the same.”
However, well-placed sources said the tests may not be at fault and might not have been correctly used. “The kits are not faulty,” an official familiar with the testing strategy said. “The use of these kits for diagnosis is at fault. The proper test for Covid is the RT