Union Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan on May 14, 2020 dedicated to the nation the COBAS-6800 Testing Machine for COVID-19 cases. This is the first such testing machine that has been procured by the government for testing of COVID-19 cases and is installed at the National Centre for Disease Control, NCDC. He visited the Control Room and the Testing Laboratories of NCDC and reviewed the current status of COVID-19 testing.
- COBAS-6800 is a sophisticated machine enabled with robotics that minimizes the chance of contamination as well as the risk of infection to the health care workers.
- NCDC has been now equipped with the COBAS-6800, a fully automated, high end machine for performing real time PCR testing COVID-19 in the service of nation.
- COBAS-6800 will provide quality, high-volume testing with around 1,200 samples in 24 hours.
- It will largely increase the testing capacity with reduction in pendency.
