New Delhi: Taking ahead India’s against Covid-19 pandemic, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Dr Harsh Vardhan on Thursday dedicated COBAS 6800, a machine, which can test 1200 COVID-19 samples in a day.
This is the first such testing machine that has been procured by the government for testing of COVID-19 cases and is installed at the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
“COBAS 6800 is a fully automated, high end machine for performing real time PCR testing COVID-19 in the service of the nation. COBAS 6800 can provide quality, high-volume testing with a high throughput of around 1200 samples in 24 hours. It will largely increase the testing capacity with reduction in pendency,” said Dr Vardhan.
Dr Vardhan visited the Control Room and the Testing Laboratories of NCDC and reviewed the current status of COVID-19 testing with Dr S K Singh, Director (NCDC) and senior officials.
The Minister said, “We have now developed a capacity to conduct 1,00,000 tests per day. Today marks an important milestone as we have tested nearly 20 lakh tests for COVID-19 mark at more than 500 laboratories including 359 Government laboratories and 145 private laboratories in the country.”
“COBAS 6800 is a sophisticated machine enabled with robotics that minimizes the chance of contamination as well as the risk of infection to the health care workers since it can be operated remotely with limited human intervention. As the machine requires a minimum BSL2+ containment level for testing, it cannot be placed at just any facility. COBAS 6800 can also detect other pathogens like Viral Hepatitis B & C, HIV, MTb (both rifampicin and isoniazide resistance), Papilloma, CMV, Chlamydia, Neiserreia etc,” Dr Vardhan said.
The Health Minister said that India’s Covid-19 doubling rate at present is 13.9 days (the last three days), while the doubling time in the past 14 days was 11.1.
India’s fatality rate is 3.2 percent and the recovery rate has further improved and today stands at 33.6 percent (it was 32.83 percent yesterday). “There are 3.0 percent active COVID-19 patients in ICU, 0.39 percent on ventilators and 2.7 percent on oxygen support,” he said.
Dr vardhan said, “Today, there are 14 States and UTs that have not reported any cases of COVID-19 in the last 24 hrs. that includes A&N Islands, Arunachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Chandigarh, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Goa, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Puducherry, Telangana. Also, Daman & Diu, Sikkim, Nagaland and Lakshadweep have not reported any cases till.”
Health Ministry data shows that as on Thursday, India registered a total of 78,003 cases from across the country in which 26,235 persons have been cured and 2,549 deaths have also occurred.
“In the last 24 hours, 3,722 new confirmed cases have also been added,” the Ministry added.
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