COVID-19: Three indigenous diagnostic kits in the offing, Bengaluru agency provides hand-holding

Three indigenous low-cost COVID-19 diagnostics kits may be on the horizon, thanks to a Bengaluru-based agency that offers hand-holding to three start-ups for developing such kits using innovative science.

Two of them have received approvals from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation for commercial manufacturing while the kit developed by the third one is being evaluated by the ICMR.

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“The testing cost for all three has been pegged at around Rs 1,000, less than a quarter of the current cost of Rs 4,500 for imported kits”, says Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platform—a Department of Biotechnology supported incubation agency—in a statement.

Public health experts are of the opinion that India needs to urgently increase the number of tests to get a handle on the coronavirus pandemic.

As per the World Health Organisation guidelines, mass testing for Covid-19 is one of the major if not the most important containment strategy for the pandemic. But India’s national testing average is still low at about 500 tests-per-million currently whereas the ICMR target is 1,00,000 tests per day.

“The demand for RT-PCR tests is 35 lakh units whereas we have ordered for 21.35 lakh units, out of which only two lakh units are from domestic suppliers,” P D Waghela, Secretary, Department of Pharmaceuticals said here on Friday.

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This is where the homegrown manufacturers can possibly chip in. Vadodara-based CoSara Diagnostics was the first Indian company to get a test license from CDSCO in late March. Validated by the National Institute of Virology, Pune the single-step reaction (RT-PCR) kit is ready to hit the market.

It gives results in two and a half hours and the company has capacity to produce 20,000 kits a day. “We are on look-out for partners to scale up production,” Taslimarif Saiyad, C-CAMP chief executive officer told DH.

The second product is from Hyderabad-based Huwel Lifesciences Pvt Ltd which reduces the testing time to less than two hours. Moreover, all molecular reagents and consumables are being made in-house. The company that received funding support from the DBT a fortnight ago has deployed a consignment of 10,000 kits in Telengana with two more orders on way.

The third detection kit is from a Noida-based start-up known as DNAXperts which uses special probes and takes less than an hour to test. The company has developed a second test, which is faster than existing methods. Both are under evaluation by the ICMR.

“Widespread testing will form the core of India’s response in the coming days of the pandemic. Locally made and locally sourced testing kits will strengthen India’s testing capacity and help in controlling the scale of transmission,” notes the C-CAMP statement.