Eleven national-level research institutions operating under various scientific, defence and agriculture departments have joined hands with government and private laboratories to carry out coronavirus tests. These include select research labs of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Department of Science and Technology (DST), Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Indian Council for Agriculture Research (ICAR), Department of Automatic Energy (DAE) and Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). Besides, a handful of independent labs and research facilities recognised either by central or state universities are also included in the latest list issued by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), released on April 19. With the latest addition, the number of central government testing facilities has now touched 200, excluding three sample collection centres each operating at Sikkim, Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. Maharashtra tops the list of states and union territories, with 40 testing facilities in all. This is followed by Tamil Nadu (32), Telangana (20), Kerala (19), Delhi (18) and Karnataka (17), as on April 19. In the coming days, more institutions could get added to this list, as requisite formalities and training is currently underway. The list of newly added institutions under CSIR, DBT, DST, DAE, ICAR and DRDO (as on April 19) 1) CSIR - Institute of Microbial Technology, Chandigarh 2) ICAR-National Research Centre on Equines, Hisar, Haryana 3) Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, Faridabad 4) Tata Memorial Centre ACTREC, Mumbai, Maharashtra 5) National Centre for Cell Sciences, Pune, Maharashtra 6) CSIR - National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, Nagpur, Maharashtra 7) Defence Research and Development Organisation, Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh 8) ICAR - National Institute of High Security Animal Disease, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh 9) Institute of Life Science, Bhubaneshwar, Odhisha 10) CSIR - Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, Telangana 11) Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad, Telangana
