Made in India virus kits boost testing, and local industry

By RISHABH R. JAIN
Associated Press

NEW DELHI (AP) — Soon after the pandemic began, India’s government, with funding from The Rockefeller Foundation, tasked the country’s most advanced bioscience innovation hub — the publicly funded Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms, or C-CAMP — with quickly finding a way to locally produce virus test kits and their components. Over a year later, most Indians can access PCR tests at a fraction of the cost — representing a massive effort by a public-private partnership to set up the local expertise to manufacture these tests within India at a low price. The price of PCR tests has fallen by near tenfold across the country from when the tests were first made available. 80% of test kits used today in the country are now completely manufactured in India.