TULIPS’s COVID-19 SWABS TO BOOST AFFORDABLE TESTING
Low-cost swabs for coronavirus testing vital to tackle the global
pandemic
῀Dr MGR Medical University predict 1.5 lakh
COVID cases in Chennai by mid-July ῀*
With an alarming rises of positive cases in
Chennai, Tulips, India’s leading personal
hygiene consumer product innovator today
announced that it is producing over 5 million ‘made-in-India’,
affordable COVID-19 SWABS per week to help the nation ramp up testing. The cost of these high-quality swabs
is almost one tenth of the imported swabs.
As India tries to
open up and revive the economy, testing is vital for tackling Coronavirus in
India. This is important as epidemiologists at Tamil Nadu *Dr MGR Medical
University predict 1.5 lakh COVID cases in Chennai by mid-July, using
mathematical modelling.
To meet the country’s need for COVID-19 tests, Tulips has converted its production lines and reconfigured equipment, of some
of its manufacturing capabilities. The company has the largest installed
capacity of Cotton buds in Asia and possesses capability of taking the COVID-19
swab production to over 30 million swabs per week, if required in due course.
Significantly, in past
19 days, COVID cases in Tamil Nadu jumped from 10,000 to 27,256. The city has
9,066 active cases, and reported 1,072 cases. Of the total cases reported in
Tamil Nadu since March 7, 18,693 cases were from Chennai.
Tulips supplied more than 7 million swabs to major VTM
kit producers, in all parts of the country. Almost all the states have started
using low cost Indian Swabs, as these have helped the states to cut their Test
Kit costs by almost 40 – 60%.
The intent is to
make the state self-reliant in nasal and throat swabs, critical in fighting
COVID-19 war and rely less on supplies from
other countries, in these testing times. With rising number of COVID-19 cases,
the company shifted focus to affordable swabs, as domestically produced swabs
would cost one-tenth the imported swabs.
Though the
recovery percent in the state is more than 50% of the total cases, the addition
of the new cases is a reminder that the demand for the testing swabs. With a
steady inflow of migrants from Maharashtra, Delhi, Karnataka, AP and Kerala who
have tested positive.
The state has not
increased its testing capacity for the past few weeks now and it still
continues to test only 10,500 to 12,000 individuals in a day. According to the
experts, Tamil Nadu needs to ramp-up its testing capabilities considerably to
contain the spread of the virus.
Key features of the highly
specialized TULIPS swabs are:
·
ICMR approved
swab with very flexible stem
·
In-built break
point at 64 mm and a red indicator line just above it thereby posing no
risk for the test medics
·
Special thin
size swab – perfectly comfortable for both nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal
·
Swab in sync for
vacutainer tubes with bung cap
·
4 tier quality
check system – quality product as per COA
|
TULIPS is the first to develop & receive the
ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) and NIV (National Institute of
Virology) validation for domestically produced special swabs. This is vital as COVID Test
swabs were not manufactured in
India, and were imported from the US or China. With global demand increasing,
it became difficult and expensive to get swabs from other nations.
Today the state and the nation needs the swabs in to fight the COVID-19
war. As per WHO, reconfiguring health systems is vital to tackling COVID-19.
This is significant amid calls for more testing for coronavirus and warnings
from the medical experts that reopening the nation’s economy without increasing
the capacity to test for the virus poses serious risks.
"Today's health crisis is unprecedented, so we all have to help
wherever we can. While we are firm on meeting the pan India needs, we are
scaling up to help the world. We are convinced that widespread and affordable testing of those infected
with COVID-19 will bring us out of the current lockdown as we do our bit to
help the states return to normalcy. We are working at full speed as time is of
the essence, and a lot is at stake. Our dedicated employees are working 24 x 7,
to ensure free availability. We
developed special swabs for COVID testing by converting the 100% Cotton
processing lines, within 10 days flat. What is unique here, is that the
entire development was done in-house by our amazing team and the trials
were done on main production lines, which enabled us to start producing the
same day we received the ICMR approval,” said Rahul Jain, Partner, Tulips.
“To fight COVID-19, India will
have to increase testing and may need over 7 – 10 million swabs every week, to
enable the nation to safely begin easing lockdown restrictions and open the
economy. This is significant as India plans aggressively to test its billion
plus population for COVID-19 to ensure the virus doesn't spread faster
when some of the regulations are relaxed.”, said Mr Rajiv Nath, Forum
Coordinator, Association of Indian Medical Device Industry (AiMeD), New Delhi ”
With COVID-19 positive cases in India crossing 250000 and deaths
surpassing 7000, experts believe, we must act decisively to outsmart the virus
and contain the outbreak. Affordable swabs enable mitigating this human crisis
by accelerating preventive testing, and quickly meeting the massive demand to a
decrease in outbreak as well as a return to normalcy.
One of the largest producers of swabs – TULIPS’ product line, currently one
of the best worldwide in innovative hygiene cotton products and wipes, employs
more than 400 workers.
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