COVID-19: All about world's cheapest testing kit created by IIT-Delhi
Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic began, medical experts have been emphasizing on the importance of aggressive and timely testing for effective containment. Now, to help with this effort and ramp up India's testing capacity, the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, has created what is being hailed as the "world's most affordable" testing kit for the disease. Here's all you need to know about it.
ICMR-approved 'Corosure' testing kit
Announced by HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal, the new low-cost COVID-19 testing kit goes by the official name of 'Corosure'. It is a completely indigenous, made-in-India assay, developed by PhD scholars, post-doctoral fellows, and professors of IIT Delhi and approved for public use by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the Drug Control General of India.
How much will it cost?
The base price of IIT-D's RT-PCR (Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction) assay is Rs. 399, and when you include other lab charges such as those of RNA isolation, the final cost of a test with the new kit comes at around Rs. 650. This is way cheaper than the regular COVID-19 test, which costs around Rs. 2,000-3,000 at a private lab.
Manufacturing being handled by a Delhi-based company
IIT-Delhi has licensed the commercial manufacturing rights of Corosure testing kit to NewTech Medical Devices, a Delhi-based manufacturing company. NewTech will be supplying the kits to authorized testing labs and is working to manufacture 2 million kits by as early as next month. It will be able to deliver results in just 3 hours, IIT Delhi says.
Kit approved with high sensitivity and specificity, says Pokhriyal
"The country requires affordable and reliable testing," Pokhriyal said at the kit's launch. "Corosure has been developed indigenously and is much cheaper than other kits. It has received ICMR's approval with the highest score and DCGI's approval with very high sensitivity and specificity."
How it reduces cost without hitting accuracy?
To reduce the cost of COVID-19 detection without affecting accuracy, the IIT-D team used a new 'probe-free' method for the kit. Under this, unlike regular probe-based tests, the kit looks for specific parts (short stretches of RNA sequences) that are unique to the novel coronavirus in the sample. It does not require any other tests and, therefore, reduces cost without affecting detection accuracy.
Spike protein of coronavirus targeted, says lead project researcher
"The primer targets unique regions where there is a spike in the COVID-19 protein. It was designed and tested using real-time polymerase chain reaction, a method for detecting small changes in the DNA. The sensitivity of this kit is comparable to that of commercial ones."
India's COVID-19 cases have surpassed the 1 million mark
The affordable testing solution from IIT-Delhi comes at a time when the COVID-19 crisis continues to deteriorate in India. Every day, the number of new infections and deaths hits a new high, painting a grim picture for the country. At the time of writing, India had as many as 10.4 lakh infections and over 26,000 deaths.
