NEW DELHI: The Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi (IIT Delhi) on Friday launched a rapid diagnostic kit for conducting Covid-19 test at a price point of Rs50 apiece.
Authorities and researchers claimed that this will boost testing in rural India given its affordability, easy to use and effectiveness in temperature as high as 35 degree to 37 degree Celsius.
The kit developed by centre for biomedical engineering at the IIT Delhi has been approved by the Indian Council of Medial Research (ICMR). The test kit has been licensed to Delhi-based Dia Sure Immunodiagnostic LLP for mass manufacturing and marketing.
The kit, perhaps the cheapest in the market, is a “colloidal gold enhanced double antibody sandwich immunoassay for the qualitative determination of SARS-CoV-2 antigen in human nasal swabs, throat swabs and deep sputum samples. It is suitable for general population screening and diagnosis of COVID-19.”
Minister of State for Education Sanjay Dhotre, who launched the ‘Rapid Antigen Test’ kit, said the kit will boost testing across the country, especially in rural India.
Harpal Singh, a professor and the lead researcher who developed the diagnostic product, said, the “invention is directed towards an in-vitro diagnostic kit for qualitative detection of SARS-CoV2 coronavirus antigens in nasopharyngeal swab, using the rapid immune chromatographic method. The identification is based on the monoclonal antibodies specific for the Coronavirus antigen”.
Singh said the test is found to be suitable for “early Ct values (Ct values between14 to 32) with a sensitivity- 90%, Specificity- 100% and Accuracy- 98.99%” and claimed that the technology and its manufacturing are 100% indigenous.
IIT Delhi director V. Ramgopal Rao said this is the second covid-19 diagnostic kit produced by the institute’s researchers.
“IIT Delhi had in July 2020 launched a Rs399 RT PCR kit, which helped bring down RTPCR test costs. Using the technologies developed in the institute, over 8 million PPE kits have been supplied so far. With the launch of this antigen-based rapid test kit, we hope to make the diagnostics easy and affordable for the rural areas,” Rao said.
The kit has been patented by IIT Delhi.
Singh said the “kit is used for in vitro qualitative detection of SARS-CoV-2 antigen” and the results obtained can be seen with naked eyes. It means, “a SARS-CoV-2 positive specimen shall produce a distinct color band in the test region and absence of this coloured band in the test region means a negative result.”
India has been battling the coronavirus pandemic for over 15 months now, with millions affected and 393,310 dead. A majority of these deaths were reported in the past three months, when the country witnessed a deadly second wave of the pandemic.
Source: The Mint
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