Gonoshasthaya can give govt test kits on Saturday

At a time when there is a global shortage of Covid-19 test kits and allegations by a number of European countries against some Chinese companies of exporting faulty kits, Gonoshasthaya Kendra is approaching its deadline to hand over its home-grown kits to the government.

"Work on production of our testing kit is going on. We can hand over the kits to the government for approval on April 25," said Dr Zafrullah Chowdhury, founder and trustee of Gonoshasthaya Kendra.

Gonoshasthaya Kendra will today collect blood samples from Covid-19 patients as the Directorate General of Health Services approved its application yesterday.

"We are sure about the accuracy of our kits. As per the government instructions, we want to be even more certain of its accuracy by testing blood samples of the positive cases," Dr Zafrullah told The Daily Star yesterday.

"Once we can produce kits on a large scale, we can export these to five to six countries after meeting our own demands," he said, urging the government to ensure speedy testing of the kits by the Directorate General of Drug Administration.

A team of Gonoshasthaya-RNA Biotech, a sister concern of Gonoshasthaya Kendra, developed the kits called Rapid Dot Blot, which can detect coronavirus infection in 15 minutes. It was facing trouble in importing reagents for the kit, but after the government approval, they imported from China and England.

The veteran physician said earlier this month that they collected five blood samples of Covid-19 patients, but the kit production was not possible due to technical glitches at their factory. With the government support, the glitches were fixed.

Gonoshasthaya Kendra again applied to the DGHS for blood samples of Covid-19 patients on April 12, but did not get any response until April 21.

He said he then contacted the Prime Minister's Office. Eventually, they received a response to the letter around 11:00am yesterday.

"We expect the government to help us smoothly go for production of the kit," he said, stressing that more tests are urgent to identify and isolate Covid-19 patients as that would be the most effective way to prevent transmission.

"It's a matter of time that we can go for the mass production of the kit," said Mohib Ullah Khondoker, managing director of the Gonoshasthaya-RNA Biotech Ltd.