Neuberg Diagnostics starts COVID-19 testing at Chennai lab after ICMR nod

Mumbai: Neuberg Diagnostics, a startup in the path lab chain segment, on Wednesday said it has commenced COVID-19 testing at its laboratory in Chennai after receiving approval from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
The company has received the approval from the ICMR for all its four labs in cities of Ahmedabad (Neuberg Supratech), Bengaluru (Neuberg Anand), Chennai (Neuberg Ehrlich) and Pune (Neuberg AG), to offer COVID-19 RT PCR tests.

"COVID-19 has been declared a global emergency by the World Health Organization, as the outbreak continues to spread beyond China. India is currently between Stage 2 and Stage 3 of the disease spread.

"The government is taking the right measures to curtail its spread and will support its efforts towards testing of a symptomatic individual currently and later asymptomatic individuals, as it may be required to augment the travel ban, identify individuals with the infection, isolate them so that the virus can be curtailed," its chairman and MD GSK Velu said in a statement.

He further said the company has also set up a special support fund for the weaker sections of the society. However, he did not give details about the same.

"Through this we will offer free of cost testing to people with a BPL ration card and appropriate doctor prescriptions. Neuberg will be scaling up its capacity up to 2,000 to 2,500 tests per day as per ICMR guidelines by next week," Velu added.

Currently, the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country stands at 562. Eleven people have succumbed to coronavirus so far.

To contain the spread of the virus, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced a nationwide lockdown for 21 days.