Maharashtra plans to cap Covid-19 test cost at Rs 1,200

PUNE: The state government is planning to cap the cost of RT-PCR test to detect Covid-19 cases in private laboratories at Rs1,200 as the Indian Council of Medical Research has given permission to several indigenous firms to manufacture its kits.
State health minister Rajesh Tope on Saturday said, “We are planning to bring the cost down of the RT-PCR test to a maximum of Rs1,200, but finally it may be between Rs1,200 and Rs1,500. The central government is keen on all states reducing the charges as testing has increased exponentially in the country.”
He said the state government had earlier brought down the cost of the RT-PCR test to Rs1,900 from Rs2,200. A fresh notification on the further reduction of cost would be issued soon, said Tope.
Maharashtra, having maximum Covid-19 caseload in the country, conducts the highest number of tests every day among all the states. The state has been conducting 29,043 tests per million population as against the country’s average of 27,553 per million. The Pune district administration has been conducting around 68,163 tests per million population.
Tope said the state would persist with its strategy to increase the testing. He said a Mumbai-based and a Thane-based company jointly developed an RT-PCR testing kit recently. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the National Institute of Virology (NIV) have approved their product. “We shall push for kits from more such indigenous companies,” said the minister.
The local manufacturers awaiting approval to their test kits claimed that the indigenous companies’ products would help ramp up the country’s testing capability further.
The ICMR and NIV are giving approval to the kits of indigenous firms following stringent guidelines, which rule out the possibility of false positive or false negative results. “These kits are on a par with global kits in terms of quality and adaptability,” said a manufacturer.