NEW DELHI : The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the nation’s top biomedical research agency, halted testing of covid-19 suspects with rapid testing kits imported from China because of a huge variation in test results, compounding the challenge to contain the pandemic. “As we got complaints from some states about the inaccuracy of the test results, we spoke with two more states and found major variations.
In some places, it is 6% while in others it is 71%," said Raman R. Gangakhedkar, head of epidemiology and communicable diseases at ICMR. “This is not a good thing.
In a scenario of such huge variation, we need to investigate further. This is a new disease and we have only three-and-a-half months of experience in handling it.