Coronavirus: Once validated, rapid antibody kits to first test milk vendors, delivery boys, and police

The state on Tuesday identified high-risk groups of people working during the pandemic, which include milk vendors, delivery boys and the state police, for use of the first sets of antibody test kits available with Karnataka to test for COVID-19. These kits, 11,400 of them, sent by the Centre to Karnataka were sent to NIMHANS for validation.

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Five categories of people have been identified by the government -- healthcare workers in COVID hospitals, non-COVID hospitals' ICU staff, those in quarantine, those above 60 with diabetes, hypertension, lung disease, cancer, tuberculosis and HIV, and people in public contact like milk vendors, delivery boys, and the state police.

Wondfo, one of the two companies approved by the National Institute of Virology, Pune, is to send one lakh test kits on April 23. Imperial Life Sciences is to deliver 50,000 test kits on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Tuesday instructed states to not use rapid antibody test kits for two days till it conducts field tests and fixes the issue of faulty kits.

In response to this, Dr CN Manjunath, Director, Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research, and nodal officer for lab testing in the state's COVID-19 task force told DH, "NIMHANS requires 18 serum samples from COVID-19 patients who have tested positive after 14-day quarantine period, Dr V Ravi (NIMHANS Neurovirology HOD) feels the antibodies will be high in these patients. Since those samples are being sourced from Mysuru's COVID-19 patients and will reach Bengaluru only on Tuesday night, validation will take time, and hence we may not use the kits within 48 hours, and hence comply with ICMR's directions."

After the validation of the test kits, they will be used first in a pilot phase. "For every red spot, we have selected a green spot. As in, for tests conducted in Bengaluru (which is a hotspot red zone), we will conduct tests in Shivamogga which is in green zone. Similarly, for tests conducted in Belagavi (which is in the red zone), we will conduct tests in Yadgir, which is in the green zone," Manjunath said.

After this pilot testing is done, test kits will be used on a mass scale in five selected districts which are all hotspots -- Bengaluru, Mysuru, Kalaburagi, Chikkaballapur, and Belagavi.