Antigen tests for Covid found tobe faulty, health min targets ICMR

Jaipur: Just like rapid antibody tests, the antigen tests for Covid-19 too have failed to give correct results in 50% of the samples tested in the state. The validation of antigen tests is going on at Sawai Man Singh (SMS) Hospital. Of the 100 samples that tested positive for Covid in RT-PCR tests, 50 are shown as negative in antigen tests.
While the rapid antibody test kits were imported from China, the antigen test kits have been bought from Korea.
Health minister Raghu Sharma expressed his anger and accused the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) of playing with the health of people by allowing companies whose kits had failed to supply the same. “At a time when the country is witnessing 55,000 new infections daily, such kind of experimentation by ICMR is wrong. Why is this 'tamasha' happening again and again,” asked Sharma, while pointing to the failure of rapid test kits from China promoted earlier by ICMR.
“In Delhi, they are conducting 6,000 RT-PCR tests and 12 antigen tests daily,” said Sharma.
The state government also accused ICMR of not sending the antigen test kits directly for validation despite repeated requests. The health department officials managed to get 200 antigen test kits, manufactured by a Korean company authorized by ICMR, from a private hospital in Jaipur.
“We got 200 antigen test kits from a private hospital. So far, we have completed validation work of 100 kits. These 100 kits were used on samples which have already tested positive for Covid in RT-PCR tests, which is the gold standard. The antigen test kits showed 50 of them as negative. The antigen test is showing negative for those who have tested positive for Covid,” said Sharma.
Once the validation work of 200 antigen test kits is over, the state government will write to ICMR about the results.
“Earlier, we had informed ICMR about the faulty rapid test kits imported from China, which were later replaced. After that, ICMR had withdrawn the rapid test kits from across the country,” said Sharma.
The state government has developed facilities for testing more than 42,000 samples though RT-RCR tests daily. Currently, it is testing 30,000 samples through such tests daily.