JOIN USIIT-Kharagpur develops low-cost, portable Covid-19 testing device
An indigenous rapid low-cost, easy-to-do Covid-19 diagnostic kit, which is touted to be as good as the gold-standard RT-PCR test, has now been validated by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), paving the way for its entry to the commercial market.
Developed by the researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, the kit named COVIRAP doesn’t need a sophisticated laboratory or a trained molecular biologist to operate even though it runs on swab samples. The test can be carried out on a tabletop and the results will be known in an hour.
“It’s not only cheaper but also doesn’t require the infrastructure of an RT-PCR and trained manpower. The machine is robust and portable and the reagents are stable making it an ideal candidate for Covid-19 detection in rural India,” Suman Chakraborty, IIT scientist and one of the developers of the kit told DH. The National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases, Kolkata NICED, one of the ICMR laboratories, tested 200 patient samples with the IIT Kharagpur kit.
“It could correctly pick up 108 of 115 Covid-19 positive samples and 83 out of 85 negative samples. It has 94% sensitivity and 98% specificity in the laboratory and can pick up the virus signatures in samples with very low viral load,” said Arindam Mandal, co-developer from the IIT Kharagpur.
Currently, Covid-19 is diagnosed with RT-PCR and rapid antigen tests. A paper-strip test developed by the CSIR scientists and commercialised by the Tata group is likely to enter the market this month.
IIT scientists said their diagnostic test is different from the CSIR method and is based on a different technology though both assays use paper strips for detection. The institute has filed a patent application and is in talks with the industry for its commercialization.
At the laboratory scale, each portable machine costs less than Rs 10,000 for development while each test would cost about Rs 500. “This test is well set to replace PCR-based tests to a large extent,” said V K Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur.
“This assay has the capability of detecting extremely low levels of viral loads that any other method based on similar principles of testing could not come up with so far. This means very early stages of infection can be detected, thereby isolating the patient and arresting the uncontrolled spread of infection ,” said NICED virologist Mamta Chawla Sarkar, who oversaw the trials.