SpiceHealth inks pact with Uttarakhand govt to conduct Covid tests for Kumbh pilgrims

Mumbai, Feb 26 PTI SpiceHealth has signed an initial pact with the Uttarakhand Government to conduct RT-PCR and Rapid Antigen tests for pilgrims visiting the state for the Kumbh Mela festival, the company said on Friday.SpiceHealths mobile lab, accredited by National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories NABL and Indian Council of Medical Research ICMR, has been set-up in Haridwar, the company said in a release.

Mumbai, Feb 26 (PTI SpiceHealth has signed an initial pact with the Uttarakhand Government to conduct RT-PCR and Rapid Antigen tests for pilgrims visiting the state for the Kumbh Mela festival, the company said on Friday.

SpiceHealth's mobile lab, accredited by National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL) and Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), has been set-up in Haridwar, the company said in a release. In addition to this, it has also set up testing facilities at five locations on the state border where pilgrims visiting Uttarakhand for Kumbh will undergo rapid antigen tests. The testing facilities will be functional from February 26, it added. SpiceHealth had launched its first mobile testing facility at ICMR, AIIMS in Delhi in November last year.

Billed as the largest gathering of people on earth, the Kumbh Mela attracts millions of devotees from across the globe. The religious festival is celebrated in a cycle of four times over the course of 12 years, with the site of the observance rotating between four river-bank pilgrimage sites of — Haridwar on the Ganges River, Ujjain on the Shipra, at Nashik on the Godavari, and at Prayagraj at the confluence of the Ganges, the Jamuna, and the legendary Saraswati, said the release. In view of the current pandemic, authorities at the Kumbh Mela have introduced strict guidelines and made passes mandatory for all pilgrims. Passes will be issued only after the submission of a negative RT-PCR test report, medical certificate and identification proof, as per the release. ''We at SpiceHealth are proud to assist the Uttarakhand Government in testing and serving those travelling to the holy city of Haridwar. We are fully committed to providing a quick, seamless and smooth testing experience through our multiple testing facilities in the State,'' Avani Singh, CEO, SpiceHealth.

SpiceHealth has conducted close to a million RT-PCR tests in the short period since its launch, said the release, adding company has scaled up its operations considerably and is now operating multiple mobile testing laboratories in Delhi NCR, Haryana, Maharashtra and Uttarakhand's Haridwar.