Ulhasnagar: Swab stick provider held, didn’t have FDA licence

The Thane Police on Thursday night arrested Manish Keswani, a provider of swab sticks for Covid-19 assessments. This comes a day after the Ulhasnagar Municipal Corporation and the police discovered slum dwellers packing swab sticks – provided by Keswani – at their properties in unsterile situations at Sant Gyaneshwar Nagar.
“Keswani has been detained and his questioning will give us further leads about the supply chain,” stated Suresh Mekhla, who holds the extra cost of Thane Police Commissioner.
Since final week, a number of households on the slum have been concerned in packing swab sticks in plastic wrappers for use for RT-PCR assessments. Women and youngsters concerned needed to pack two swabs every in a packet and earned Rs 20 for 1,000 packets.
Keswani owns a godown within the slum and stocked the packing materials there. Slum dwellers stated he had employed a number of households within the space to pack the sticks. “Due to the lockdown, income is low and people were willing to do any job,” stated native resident Surendra Yadav, who first posted a video of kids packing the sticks on social media.
Pravin Mundada, Joint Commissioner (Drugs), stated his crew had visited two main producers of swab sticks in Thane and each have claimed that they weren’t related to Keswani. “We have inspected their manufacturing units. They have a license and follow norms of medical device production. The two supply to most labs in Thane,” he added.
Mundada stated that an inspection confirmed that Keswani’s kits, named Bio-Swab, weren’t utilized by municipal firms, hospitals or labs in Ulhasnagar. “We suspect he was supplying to other districts or other states.”
Keswani has not acquired a license from the Maharashtra FDA to fabricate swab sticks, data present. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officers stated the case may very well be of spurious manufacturing.
A swab stick is utilized by laboratories to conduct RT-PCR assessments to detect Covid-19. The stick is inserted within the affected person’s nasal and oral tracts to gather samples after which deposited in a fluid within the viral transport media (VTM) tube. Officials stated the 2 are all the time offered collectively as a package to laboratories.

On Thursday, the FDA and the police inspected Keswani’s godown-cum-office in Ulhasnagar and didn’t discover any indication of VTM being manufactured. “We suspect he sold the swab kits to some manufacturer who sold it along with VTM to labs. We are yet to figure out the entire supply chain,” Mundada stated.
A swab stick as soon as packed undergoes gamma radiation for sterilisation. In Ulhasnagar, the sticks have been being full of naked palms by kids and ladies, with most conserving the sticks on ground, mat or plates.

When The Indian Express met the households, they stated they weren’t given sanitisers or gloves for the job. The slum dwellers have been concerned within the packing job final yr as nicely when the primary wave had hit Maharashtra.