COVID testing license given to 'Healthians' lab by ICMR, NABL: Gurugram police to Delhi HC

In a key development before the Delhi High Court, on October 26 Gurugram Police and Gurugram health department gave a clean chit to 'M/s Healthians', a diagnostic lab, affirming that the entity has requisite accreditation of Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) and National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL) respectively, for carrying out pathology diagnostics via sample collection.

Court directs Gurugram & Delhi Police to identify labs conducting COVID tests without a license

Basis a complaint that an online health service provider has been collecting samples for COVID-19 without requisite licensing, the Delhi HC had directed Gurugram and Delhi Police to file a status report on the action taken by them in this regard. A bench of Justice Najmi Waziri, during previous hearings, had asked the Delhi and Gurugram Police to identify other private laboratories which have been conducting COVID-19 tests without licenses. The same bench had issued notices to aforesaid police departments and directed them to file respective responses before the court.

"The Healthians never performed any COVID-19 test till April 15, 2021, and has only been involved in sample collection under the MoU with NABL and ICMR approved COVID-19 Labs. It has a registration certificate under the Clinical Establishment (Registration and Regulation) Act, 2010," Gurugram Police in its affidavit stated. 

As of August 16, 2021, ICMR sets up 134 laboratories in Delhi

The affidavit has been filed seeking initiation of contempt proceedings for the Delhi government for allegedly not complying with the Delhi HC order and not taking action against online health service aggregators operating in the Delhi-NCR and to further regulate online pathological laboratories. The Court said that the ICMR should not be secluded from facts at hand and it should look into the complaints in relation to private diagnostic and pathology laboratories.

Notably, ICMR in its affidavit had informed the Delhi HC that NABL certification is a pre-requisite for enrollment of private labs for COVID-19 testing and to monitor the activities of online health service aggregators was beyond its ambit. Furthermore, ICMR submitted that as of August 16, 2021, the ICMR had approved 134 laboratories in the national capital for RT-PCR, TrueNAT, CBNAAT and other M-NAT Testing Platforms, out of which, 35 are government-operated and 99 privately owned. 

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