Jaipur, 15 September. Medical and health minister Dr. Rudra Sharma told in the assembly that to assure inspection of covid19 infected people in the state on time cobas machine has been purchased on a Wednesday.
Dr Sharma was answering the supplement questions asked by the students related to this matter in the question hour. He clarified that this machine is made by only one company and its purchase has been made to increase the RTPCR tests in the state. He said that in the machine that was available before it was possible to only take 96 tests in one cycle and it took about 5-6 hours for the reports to come.
He told that on seeing the effect of covid chief minister Mr. Ashok Ghalot made a team of doctors. After this, this team of doctors suggested of buying this machine so that there can be an increase in taking tests.
He told that the test limit of this machine is up to 4000 in a day and when there was pressure on the state for increasing the process of testing, almost 3500 tests were also taken on this machine. The Health minister told us that today we can take up to 1 lakh and 50 thousand tests in the state. Clarifying the purchase of cobas machine he said that many other national institutions in the country have also made this purchase. He told that our one machine was purchased by RCMR and was sent to the state of Bihar.
Before this, answering the important question of Governor Mr. Narayan Singh Dewal, Dr. Rudr Mishra told that on seeing the increase in covid19 cases in the year 2020 there was thought of buying 2 Cobas-8800 Machine on 22nd April 2020 so the inspection limit of covid19 can be increased from 4700 per day to 8000 cases per day. An order of buying one Cobas-8800 machine each was given to the medical college of Jaipur and Jodhpur by the state. Following the order, a Cobas-8800 machine and 20000 test kits were made available in medical college, Jaipur by the supplier. The machine was not made available to medical college Jodhpur by the company. For making the purchase of the machine Rs. 6.726 crores were spent and on the purchase of 20000 test kits a total of Rs. 2.96 crore were spent.
He told that a Cobas-8800 machine was made available in the microbiology lab of Siwai Mansingh University on 30th august 2020. He kept the description of the tests done by the machine every day and the money spent on the table of the house.
