Coronavirus: India gets 'faulty' testing kits from China Isn't it time we MPs ask -- Did the Govt take away our MPLADS funds to pay for faulty testing kits from China? Who is responsible for wasting public money & putting public health at risk?
1/9 Been reading the comments on this issue on social media. This thread responds, disregarding the usual whataboutery & lame refs to "70 years of @INCIndia rule" (though i didn't know Vajpayeeji had joined our party: posthumously, seeing what's happened to BJP, he well might!)
2/9 "What can Modi do about it? Many other countries also had the same experience."
Yes, that's exactly the point. How smart is a government if it does not learn from the mistakes of other govts? Isn't it foolishness to make the same mistake at the cost of public health& money?
Yes, that's exactly the point. How smart is a government if it does not learn from the mistakes of other govts? Isn't it foolishness to make the same mistake at the cost of public health& money?
3/9 The EU Medicine Agency’s guidelines, on par with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC), require that rapid tests be 80% accurate. Chinese kits bought by India have shown an average of 5% accuracy, which is the lowest by their own standards.
4/9 China said that the kits should be procured from authorised manufacturers. One of the companies that India ordered from is the same company that the UK govt had ordered&then rejected for being flawed. The British are seeking a $20 million refund from the two Chinese companies
5/9 Spain, w/one of the largest counts of positive cases, returned around 600,000 faulty kits to China. Czech&Filipino authorities also discarded testing kits imported from China, claiming they had only 20%& 40% accuracy respectively. Slovak PM: "throw straight into the Danube”.
6/9 "What other choice did our Govt have? Congress was asking for rapid tests." Ans: Yes we have options: The answer lies in indigenous development of test-kits, as USA,SouthKorea &Germany have done. Indians are no less capable but has the Govt been smart enough to facilitate it?
7/9 Infact, there are 2 successful initiatives from my own constituency, Thiruvananthapuram, w/which I am closely associated: Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences&Technology (SCTIMST) and Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB), both GoI centres of excellence.
8/9 SCTIMST's RT-LAMP test, a conclusive, yet faster & cheaper test which can replace expensive &time-consuming RT-PCR tests, &RGCB's Antibody rapid test kits (the kind we have now imported from China &found faulty) are still awaiting ICMR approval. Why is Govt dragging its feet?
9/9 In this emergency, ICMR should be taking decisions in hours and days, not weeks and months! We had given ₹1Cr funding to SCTIMST from MPLADS on Mar 30. Since then their kits are ready, trials have worked. RGCB too. But ICMR is unable to move at the rapid pace required. Why?
