CCMB offers training for Covid-19 testing centres

The City-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) has offered to train ICMR-approved government as well as private Covid-19 testing centres so that they can adopt its dry swab-based direct RT-PCR method of Covid-19 testing.

The CCMB aims to train 500 testing centres across India, starting this week. Most of these sessions will be online to reach out to centres out of Hyderabad. The willing centres can book their slots on http://e-portal.ccmb.res.in/dst_slotbooking/. Those in and around Hyderabad can also avail physical training sessions by reaching out to the Director at CCMB.

The dry swab-based direct RT-PCR method of Covid-19 testing developed by CCMB and approved by ICMR can now be



adopted in testing labs of the country. This method is easier to carry out than the current procedures and can ramp up testing by two to three times using the current infrastructure in the testing labs. This method needs no viral transport medium for sending samples from sample collection centres to testing centres.

“India is struggling with a steep surge in Covid-19 cases. The testing centres are overwhelmed with the number of samples that they have to test. It is an absolute need to increase our testing capacity within the existing setup. We are positive that the dry swab-based direct RT-PCR method will help in the cause immensely,” says Dr Rakesh Mishra, Advisor, CCMB.