In a major breakthrough in its fight against COVID-19 India got its 1st indigenous testing kit. Pune based Mylab Discovery Solutions Pvt Ltd has developed India’s first indigenous COVID-19 testing kit. The kit can halve the duration of time required for testing.
The testing kit has been approved by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). The kit costs Rs 80,000 & can test 100 patients. The testing kit is named Mylab PathoDetect COVID-19 Qualitative PCR kit. It reduces the test time to 2.5 hours from the prevalent 6 to 8 hours. The kit is developed by a team of 25 scientists in 6 weeks.
The company would make over 15,000 testing kits per day from its facility at Lonavala. This would be ramped up to 25,000 kits per day soon. World Health Organization (WHO) has bee stressing on the need of testing kits to trace and curb the spread of COVID-19. So, far the National Institute of Virology (NIV) was providing the kits. As the number of cases are rising the private sector interventions was necessary.
The manufacturers of the kit say that their kit can provide testing per sample at 1/4th cost as existing. Per sample cost of testing through NIV kits stand at around INR 4,500. The best part is that the kits can work in the existing lab diagnostics infrastructure of the country. No new equipment or machinery is required for testing. So, far India has recorded over 500 cases and 10 deaths.
