Pune, May 7 (IANS): Mylab Discovery Solutions has completed expansion of its production capacity to manufacture COVID-19 RT-PCR tests.

As per the production plan, Mylab will scale-up manufacturing to 2 lakh tests per day from the second week of May.

Adar Poonawalla, CEO, Serum Institute of India said, " It overwhelms me to see our efforts with Mylab in making India self-reliant in combating COVID-19 fructified. As our production capacity increases from 20,000 tests per day to 2 lakh COVID-19 tests per day, we will now be able to meet India's growing demand for testing completely."

"This is an important milestone for the Make in India initiative as it sets a precedent of health institutions coming together to work towards the interest of public health. It further helps our government reduce its dependency on foreign counterparts with an assurance of quality and reliability." he further added

Mylab has already manufactured 6.5 lakh tests and has supplied tests to 140 sites including labs and hospitals in over 20 states of India.

With the support of India Post (The Department of Posts), the company has been able to deliver test kits across different parts of the country including Armed Forces Medical College in Pune, District Mineral Foundation, of Odisha, and R & R Army Hospital of Delhi.

The company has also received approval from Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) for its RNA extraction kit, Maverick, to further streamline the RT-PCR testing process.

Hasmukh Rawal, Managing Director, Mylab Discovery Solutions said, "We aim to make India self-reliant with high-quality testing. As we ramp-up our production, our focus on quality is more than ever. Supplied with endogenous internal control for housekeeping gene, our kits can ensure that we can detect samples which were not collected, transported or processed correctly and remove false negatives."