Health Ministry has lost interest in PCR testing – Ravi Kumudesh

By Rathindra Kuruwita

The Health Ministry has not taken steps to process a tender for reagents used for PCR tests that could drastically reduce the cost of a test, President of the College of Medical Laboratory Science, Ravi Kumudesh told The Island yesterday.

Kumudesh said that 30 suppliers had made bids for the tender dated October 02, 2020.

“Some of the suppliers have offered to sell a unit at Rs. 1,500 and these are good quality reagents validated by many countries. If we can purchase reagents at this price, the difference between a PCR test and a rapid antigen test would be around Rs. 200,” Kumudesh said.

Kumudesh said the cost of a PCR test was Rs. 5,500 at present. This could be drastically reduced through proper tender procedure, he added.

“On the other hand, the Ministry acted hastily on a tender, on October 28, to purchase rapid antigen testing kits. Things have moved so fast that the Minister by now is also ready to distribute them among a number of hospitals,” Kumudesh said.

Although the Minister was planning to bring rapid antigen testing kits in a hurry, so far validation process had not been done, he said. Ministry hadn’t also presented the algorithm they would use for these kits.

Kumudesh said that with all the focus being on rapid antigen testing; samples collected for PCR testing had dropped by around 30% during the last week, compared to the week before.

“So we have two problems. On the one hand, the ministry is promoting rapid antigen testing instead of PCR tests. On the other, it is delaying the processing of a tender for PCR reagents.”

The NMRA must come up with a protocol on validating rapid antigen test kits and reveal the mechanism to the public, the President of the College of Medical Laboratory Science added.

“The sample for validating these kits must be chosen randomly. Given that these antigen tests can only detect those with a high viral load, someone can do the tests among people they suspect to have high vital doses to come up with a favourable result.”

President of the College of Medical Laboratory Science added that there were close to 200 companies that produced rapid antigen test kits. Contrary to claims being made in some quarters, the World Health Organization (WHO) had not given the approval for two companies, Kumudesh said.

“WHO approved them, considering the situation in the US while a presidential election was drawing near and COVID19 cases were exploding. That’s why these two US-based kits were mentioned but the WHO never said other kits were bad. Therefore, there is no reason why kits from China, India and Germany should be rejected.”