COVID-19 Testing: Union Health Minister Launches India’s First Mobile Laboratory

New Delhi: India’s first mobile laboratory for COVID-19 testing in rural and inaccessible areas of the country was launched by Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan.

“To ensure testing facilities in far-flung areas, such innovations have been developed in the interior, inaccessible parts of the country,” said the Health minister during the launch on Thursday.

A collaboration of the Ministry of Science and Technology with Andhra Pradesh Med-tech Zone, it’s designed to address shortage of critical healthcare technologies in India and move progressively towards a stage of self-sufficiency, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Atmanirbhar Bharat mission.

“It has the capability to perform 25 RT-PCR tests and 300 ELISA tests per day besides additional tests for TB, HIV as per CGHS rates,” Dr Vardhan explained.

“We had started the fight against COVID with one laboratory in February. Today, we have 953 laboratories across the country. Out of these, 699 are government labs,” he added.

Coronavirus cases have been surging alarmingly in India, with a record single-day increase of 12,881 patients reported in the last 24 hours. Overall, the count has gone up to 3,66,946, while the death toll is 12,237 till date.