NEW DELHI: India has not yet seen community transmission and continues to be in stage 2 (local transmission) of the Covid-19 outbreak, the Indian Council of Medical Research said Tuesday, even as it decided to intensify testing and rope in private laboratories for the purpose. ICMR director-general Balram Bhargava said preliminary results of 500 random samples were all negative and insisted that there is no evidence yet of a community outbreak. “There have been no signs of community transmission,” he said, rejecting reports that India is not testing enough individuals. “Our objective is to avoid indiscriminate testing, reduce panic and optimally utilise the resources, and scale up testing facilities.”ICMR chief epidemiologist RR Gangakhedkar said it was incorrect to compare India’s testing strategy with those of other countries. “Those countries have established that they are at stage 3. The strategy will be different if we find any such evidence. The surveillance was done to check whether we have moved to community transmission. This is an ongoing activity, and we will continue to monitor,” he said.As reported by ET on March 16, ICMR’s 51 laboratories had tested random samples of individuals with acute respiratory illness from various intensive care units.“Of the total samples, the result of 500 were negative,” said Nivedita Gupta, epidemiologist at ICMR.Bhargava said the ICMR has scaled up its testing facilities. There are now 121 functional laboratories equipped to test for the novel coronavirus . Laboratories operated by other government departments and hospitals will soon be equipped to carry out testing, he said.“We are also operationalising two rapid testing laboratories. We are getting the reagents to make them functional and they will be able to test up to 1,400 samples a day. They will be operationalised by the end of this week,” the ICMR director-general said.Bhargava also said the ICMR was looking at roping in private laboratories to test for Covid-19. He suggested that labs accredited by the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL) could be allowed to test for the novel coronavirus. The labs would be asked to provide the tests free of cost, he said.