The Minister for Science & Technology, Earth Sciences and Health & Family Welfare Dr Harsh Vardhan inaugurated and flagged off India’s first I-Lab (Infectious disease diagnostic lab) for Covid testing in rural and inaccessible areas of India, recently.

This mobile testing facility will be deployed through the DBT testing hubs to remote regions of the country for Covid testing. There are now over 20 hubs in the country with 100 testing laboratories and these have tested more than 2,60,000 samples.

The Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Ministry of Science & Technology along with Andhra Pradesh Med-tech Zone (AMTZ) has initiated the DBT-AMTZ COMManD [COVID Medtech Manufacturing Development] Consortia to address the shortage of critical healthcare technologies in India and move progressively towards a stage of self-sufficiency.

Under this Consortia, India’s first I- lab (infectious disease diagnostic lab) has been built at AMTZ in record time of 8 days from the date of receipt of Automotive Chassis, from Bharat Benz. This is a mobile diagnostic unit with biosafety facility.

The I- lab is a BSL-2 facility with on-site ELISA, RT-PCR, Bio chemistry analysers. It can run 50 RT-PCR reactions and about 200 ELISA in a day.Double set of Machines can help increase the capacity to about 500 per day in 8 hours shift.

It can be deployed in remote areas and can be lifted from Automotive Chassis and can be put on goods train for sending to any location in the country.The BSL -2 Lab is as per NABL specifications and is being attached to DBT’s certified Testing centres.