Canards Spread against West Bengal over Covid-19 Tests, Says Mamata; Accuses Centre of Sending Faulty Kits

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday slammed the Centre for sending teams to look into West Bengal's preparedness for tackling the COVID-19 outbreak and alleged faulty testing kits were dispatched to the state.

She also questioned all those critics -- who blamed her for not taking adequate measures to fight the pandemic -- to respond to the faulty kits received from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

Banerjee's comments came a day after a war of words broke out between West Bengal and the Union government over the arrival of two central teams in the state to assess the COVID-19 situation.

"Canards are being spread every day that only a few are getting tested in Bengal for COVID-19. This is absolutely false. Faulty kits were sent to Bengal which have now been withdrawn. We didn't even get adequate testing kits," she said.

"Every day they (Centre) are telling us what to do and what not to do, sending people to look into the law and order situation and our preparedness against coronavirus. They are sending us strongly-worded letters. We can also send them letters. But that's not the point," she said.

Banerjee said her government is doing the best it can to stem the spread of the pandemic.

Banerjee said the ICMR had supplied three types of test kits -- rapid testing kits, BGI RT-PCR kits, and antigen kits. "The ground realty is the rapid testing kits and BGI RT-PCR kits were both withdrawn as per communication from National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED) on April 21," she said, adding that antigen kits are not being supplied to hospitals in the state so far.

She said the state's Department of Health and Family Welfare has zero kits supplied from ICMR/NICED, which can test a COVID-19 patient as per ICMR recommendations.

Recently, NICED withdrew the consignment of defective COVID-19 testing kits from some of the state-run laboratories in West Bengal.

The Bengal health department has alleged that the COVID-19 testing kits supplied by NICED (the ICMR's nodal agency in the state) a few days ago were "defective" as they showed inconclusive results leading to delay in diagnosis.