PM Modi-inaugurated Cobas 8800 at ICMR-NICED belies expectations
Kolkata: The project of setting up three high-throughput novel Coronavirus (SARS-CoV2) testing laboratories at three different places in the country — Mumbai, Kolkata and Noida — launched virtually by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 26 amid much fanfare, appears to be a dampener as the Cobas 8800 machine at ICMR-NICED, Kolkata, has failed to live up to the announced expectations.
After being idle for a long time, the Cobas 8800 machine at ICMR-NICED finally started operation a couple of days ago but it failed to carry out even around 1,800 sample tests per day due to technical issues. The machine from Roche Diagnostics is said to perform around 4,000 tests per day and can make Covid testing faster and more reliable. Cobas takes around 40 minutes to show a result while other machines take much longer.
Shanta Dutta, director, ICMR-NICED, said: "We are getting around 1,800-2,200 samples per day. We are trying to conduct tests as many as possible but we fail to meet the expected numbers." The director, however, could not mention when the machine can perform to its full potential.
According to sources, there was a leakage at the BSL II lab at NICED where the machine had been set up and its standardisation also took a long time. Apart from this, a part of the machine was learnt to have been damaged during transport.
The Centre and many BJP leaders had been quite vocal against the Mamata Banerjee government and accused the latter of conducting less number of tests per day. But the state government managed to cross 45,000 tests per day recently. The number could have well crossed the 50,000-mark if the Cobas machine would have performed to its potential. The primary reason behind the announcement of the high capacity Cobas machine was to ramp up testing and therefore, help the state government contain the spread of the infection.
Incidentally, the state government has already cancelled the order for another Cobas which was supposed to be imported from Switzerland in January next year as by then, the infection rate may subside. The Health department has, therefore, strengthened the infrastructure at the district level.
When contacted, state Health Secretary Narayan Swaroop Nigam said: "We are not importing Cobas as it is expected to arrive in January next year. The city has already received a Cobas machine so we are now installing more RT-PCR labs in the districts. As many as 60 RT-PCR machines have been installed across the state so far."
