On April 21, a small consignment of coronavirus-protection coveralls travelled from Mumbai to the Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied ...

On April 21, a small consignment of coronavirus-protection coveralls travelled from Mumbai to the Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences in Delhi. The institute is part of the Defence Research and Development Organisation, India’s premier military research agency.
The coveralls are a critical component of the personal protective equipment that shield doctors, nurses and other health workers from the novel coronavirus, which has infected over 46,000 Indians and killed over 2,200 so far.
These coveralls cannot be supplied to government hospitals unless they are tested for quality and given certifications of approval by one of eight government-appointed laboratories. The Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences, INMAS, is one of them.
The company that sent the coveralls from Mumbai was Reubens Hospitech, a medium-sized firm located in the Dadar area.
The day it sent the samples, INMAS issued a notice that said it could take up to five weeks to provide manufacturers with the test results of their samples because of the large number of samples that had been submitted.
For Reuben Hospitech, this came as a blow: it could mean waiting up till May 26 to know if its samples have passed the quality test. “Without the test results and the certification code they provide, we cannot...