Dr Harsh Vardhan dedicates COBAS-6800 testing machine to the nation

Union Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan today dedicated to the nation the COBAS-6800 Testing Machine for COVID-19 cases.

This is the first such testing machine that has been procured by the government for testing of COVID-19 cases and is installed at the National Centre for Disease Control, NCDC. He visited the Control Room and the Testing Laboratories of NCDC and reviewed the current status of COVID-19 testing.

Dr. Harsh Vardhan said that COBAS-6800 is a sophisticated machine enabled with robotics that minimizes the chance of contamination as well as the risk of infection to the health care workers.

Highlighting the achievements in ramping up



the testing capability, Dr Harsh Vardhan said, government has now developed a capacity to conduct one lakh tests per day. He said, we have tested nearly 20 lakh tests for COVID-19 mark at more than 500 laboratories including 359 Government laboratories and 145 private laboratories in the country.

He further added that NCDC has been now equipped with the COBAS-6800, a fully automated, high end machine for performing real time PCR testing COVID-19 in the service of nation. COBAS-6800 will provide quality, high-volume testing with around 1,200 samples in 24 hours. It will largely increase the testing capacity with reduction in pendency.