New Delhi:Being aware of the emerging outbreak of COVID-19 disease, India's apex medical research body ICMR on late Wednesday evening floated tender for 1 million testing kits.
Officials said that supplier and companies have to deliver these kits to ICMR's regional facility centres in Delhi, Mumbai, Dibrigarh, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bhopal on an urgent basis.
Giving a deadline for 24 hours, the ICMR on late Wednesday evening invited quotation from manufacturers for supply of 1 million testing kits for Covid 19 patients.
"Any manufacturer with Indian based supplier can bid in the tender that closes tonight," said official.
Earlier, the deadline was 12:30 p.m. on Thursday.
ICMR in its quotation has also asked the supplier to give all details including price and testing capacity per kits.
Officials said that the qualification criteria have been confined to those having approval from US Food and Drug Administration, the European regulator's CE in-vitro diagnostic (IVD) certification or validation certificate from the institute's National Institute of Virology (NUV-Pune).
As of now, Roche Diagnostics 'cobas' and Co--Diagnostics' Logix Smart Covid 19 test kits have US FDA's authorisation, diagnostic kits of MyLabs and Altona have been validated at NIV, Pune.
Officials said that the unabated number of COVID-19 positive cases across India has forced the ICMR to asks for more testing kits on emergency basis.
As per union health ministry reports, India registered 649 coronavirus positive cases till Thursday afternoon with 593 active case, 42 discharged, 13 deaths and one migrated case.
Meanwhile, the 21 days lockdown announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi entered third day on Thursday with security agencies trying their best to enforce total lockdown.
Essential services like medical, hospital, fire brigade, grocery shops among others have been exempted from the lockdown.
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