The Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court noted on Tuesday that rapid antibody tests for COVID-19 are for surveillance purpose only, and said a final decision on conducting such tests in containment zones across Maharashtra is to be taken by the state government.
The testing technique is used to detect antibodies in the blood of people who may have had coronavirus infection.
A division bench of Justices Ravi Deshpande and Amit Borkar asked the state government to take an appropriate decision on a plea filed by a lawyer, Tushar Mandlekar, demanding that rapid antibody tests be conducted on people residing in places declared as COVID-19 containment zones.
Government lawyer Sumant Deopujari told the court that these tests are done only for surveillance purposes and are not diagnostic tests.
He further told the court that the state government was mulling to conduct the ‘ELISA’ test (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay test-that detects antibodies in blood) for diagnosis of COVID-19.
ELISA is India’s first indigenous antibody detection kit for COVID-19 that will play a critical role in surveillance for coronavirus infection, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan had said. The kit was developed by the National Institute of Virology (NIV) at Pune earlier this month.
The bench took note of argument presented by the government and said even the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) was of the opinion that rapid antibody tests were merely for surveillance purposes.
“Both the state and Union government are of the unanimous opinion that the rapid antibody tests are not diagnostic tests,” the court said.
“Hence, the petitioner’s prayer seeking for this test to be conducted on all people living in containment zones would be of no avail as this is not a diagnostic test,” the bench said. The court said it leaves it to the state government to take an appropriate decision on the plea.
Maharashtra has reported maximum number of coronavirus cases in the country with 52,667 infections and 1,695 deaths.