Low-cost device to detect Covid-19 developed by IIT Kharagpur researchers

Researchers at IIT Kharagpur have developed a low cost portable rapid testing device to detect Covid-19.

With the device, called Covirap, each test can be conducted in an hour and results can be made available through a customized smartphone application.

It costs less than Rs 400 per test with the device which researchers claim is the “first-of-its-kind.”

“This first-of-its-kind device will bring the testing for Covid-19 out from the walls of expensive laboratories and RT-PCR machines and enable testing at affordable costs for the under-served community across the world,” stated a release issued by IIT Kharagpur.

The device costs about Rs 2000 if a pilot facility is used but the price will come down further with increase in production scale.

“This compares very favorably with the RT PCR machine costing Rs 15 lakhs,” stated the release.

The brainchild of Prof. Suman Chakraborty from the Mechanical Engineering Department and School of Bio Science of IIT Kharagpur the device is capable of conducting a large number of tests on replacement of the paper cartridge after each test.

The device can not only be used at places with extremely poor resources but it can be operated by minimally trained personnel addressing the issue of need for skilled technicians.

Prof. Chakraborty pointed out that during assessment of the utility of a specific method of disease detection, the fact that the cost of the test kit may not be the most crucial fact in terms of providing affordable diagnosis is often overlooked.

“ In that light, the RT-PCR based tests suffer from a compelling constraint of requiring an elaborate laboratory-infrastructure and support system including the operational and maintenance cost, to perform the test,” he said.

The device can not only be used for detection of Covid-19 infection but also for detection of any other kind of RNA virus following the same generic procedure.

“This unique innovation is aligned with the Institutional vision to develop high-end healthcare technologies that can be afforded by the ailing common people all around the globe at virtually no cost, and is likely to make significant breakthrough in global viral pandemic management”, opined Director of IIT Kharagpur Prof. V K Tewari.