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The figure includes the estimated expenditure of the state governments and takes into account only reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests, which confirm the presence of the coronavirus.
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said 401,586 samples from private and government labs had been tested as of April 19.
The ICMR and the health ministry have justified India’s testing strategy as “adequate” on the grounds that resources are limited and only the most deserving need to be tested.
Maharashtra and Mumbai city, which had carried out the largest number of tests in the country, changed their criteria after people who needed them were not getting the tests. ET spoke to several private lab operators enrolled to start Covid-19 tests in the country. One of the biggest cost components is reagents, priced at Rs 800-1,500, and with the cost of transportation and labour, the figure works out to Rs 2,500, said GSK Velu, chairman of Neuberg Diagnostics, which does tests for the government and private individuals.
Private labs were in a fix after the Supreme Court said on April 8 that they would have to offer the tests free of cost. The court later modified its order and limited the free testing at private labs only to those with government insurance. For others, the cost was capped at Rs 4,500 per test.
Among the states, Maharashtra with 72,023 tests should have spent Rs 18 crore on RT-PCR tests and Rajasthan at 57,290 tests should have spent Rs 14.3 crore.
Kerala’s expenditure was estimated at about Rs 4.84 crore for 19,351 tests and Gujarat at 26,554 tests would have spent Rs 6.64 crore.
The amount spent on testing by these states is a fraction of the funds they had received from the central government in response to the Covid-19 outbreak, according to an official of a private lab who did not wish to be identified.
The Central government had released over Rs 17,000 crore to state governments to purchase personal protection equipment, ventilators and test kits, among other things.
“With such a budget, the state governments should be able to absorb the cost of private labs, too, if they offer to do it at a no-profit-no-loss basis, because for private labs too this is no longer a profitable initiative”, said Velu of Neuberg Diagnostics.
The ICMR recently purchased antibody kits that are not for diagnosis but for epidemiological purposes. The ICMR bought 500,000 kits at Rs 800 each. “The cost of testing is really not that much – the issue is capacity augmentation but much more is required,” said Ravi Gaur, COO of Oncoquest Labs, a diagnostic chain.
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