Chennai: Indian Council of Medical Research has urged States and Union Territories to obtain district-wise login credentials for entry of testing data.
In a letter to the Chief Secretaries of all States and UTs, ICMR head, Balram Bhargava said, “Key strategy to save lives and protect livelihoods remains ‘tests, track, treat”.
He said further: “Our continuous endeavour is to increase testing capacity and provide more and more accessible to people for testing. ICMR recently approved a point-of-care rapid antigen test for diagnosis of Covid-19, in addition to the already existing molecular diagnostic tools. Antigen test is a promising tool for quick diagnosis of Covid-19.”
Meanwhile, ICMR has once again that there is nothing wrong with the ambitious vaccine timeline and even went on to say that India will have a ‘big role’ to play in vaccine development globally.Ā Bhargava said the country’s top minds are at work to fast-track development:
“India is well-known as the pharmacy of the world… It also supplies 60% of the worldās vaccines, whether it be Africa, Europe, south-east Asia or anywhere. So, any vaccine candidate thatās produced or developed in any part of the world will ultimately have to be scaled-up in India or by China because these are the two major vaccine producers of the world,” he said.