Use existing lab facilities against COVID-19, says scientist

Chennai, Apr 4 () The Madras High Court on Mondayissued notice to the Centre and Tamil Nadu government on aPIL by a former scientific advisor to late A P J Abdul Kalamwhich said the number of COVID-19 tests can be ramped up to3.76 lakh per day if all PCR labs in educational institutionsand research institutions are roped in. The public interest litigation petition filed by scientistV Ponraj, associated with former president Kalam for 20 years,sought a direction to the Centre and the state government tosubmit an action plan to ramp up the testing for coronavirus. The petitioner sought report on the number of RT-PCR(reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction) testingequipment available in labs in the universities and otherresearch institutions in the country.

When the PIL came up for hearing before a division benchof Justices Vineet Kothari and Pushpa Sathyanarayana throughvideo conference, the court issued notice to the Union andstate governments directing them to file counter affidavits byand posted the matter for further hearing to May 12.

The petitioner submitted that at present only around 367PCR labs under the Indian Council of Medical Research werebeing used for testing samples, with 1,814 samples each bythem per day. He said in Tamil Nadu alone there were about 126 RT-PCR/qPCR Labs where RNA/DNA research was pursued. The numberof similar labs in the country and ICMR labs can add up to1,000 in which case 3.76 lakh tests can be done per day. The petitioner said the Tamil Nadu government need notwait for the Central government for the Rs 1,000 crore forpurchase of PCR machines and can utilise the 126 labs, hesaid. NVGVS VS