South Korea - that's so tiny - has 650 labs testing for the coronavirus, how many do we have?" asks Sujatha Rao, former federal health secretary. India has only 118 government laboratories and officials say 50 private labs will also be roped in. For a population of 1.3 billion, that is far from adequate. "India will have to identify many more labs, then the testing kits have to reach there, and technicians have to be trained. And getting the infrastructure ramped up will take time," Ms Rao says. You know the state of the healthcare facilities in the country? They are all bunched up in urban areas, there's very little facility in rural India. That will be a big challenge," she says.
Geeta Pandey, ‘Coronavirus: The woman behind India's first testing kit’, BBC
