A method to detect COVID-19 which will significantly reduce the cost of testing developed by IIT Delhi has got the approval from the ICMR.
New Delhi| IIT Delhi, the first academic institute to get approval for a real-time polymerase chain reaction-based model, has got the approval from the Indian Medical Research body for a probe-free COVID-19 detection assay developed by it.
In a statement on Thursday, the institute, said the assay had been approved at Indian Council for Medical Research with a sensitivity and specificity of 100%, making IIT-D the first educational institute to have received ICMR approval for a real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based diagnostic assay.
Researchers at IIT Delhi’s Kusuma School of Biological Sciences (KSBS) have developed the assay.
“Using comparative sequence analyses, the IIT Delhi team identified unique regions (short stretches of RNA sequences) in the COVID-19/SARS COV-2 genome. These regions are not present in other human coronaviruses, providing an opportunity to specifically detect COVID-19,” the statement read.
Indian Council for Medical Research had suggested all States to abstain from using rapid test kits for two days after huge variations in the accuracy of results were noticed across regions.
It added that the method used primers targeting unique regions of COVID-19 that were designed and tested using real-time PCR.
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“These primers specifically bind to regions conserved in over 400 fully sequenced COVID-19 genomes. This highly sensitive assay was developed by extensive optimization using synthetic DNA constructs followed by in-vitro generated RNA fragments,” it further read.
The research team said the assay would be useful for specific and affordable high throughput testing.
“The team is targeting large-scale deployment of the kit at affordable prices with suitable industrial partners as soon as possible,” the team said.
India is 10 days away from ending its Lockdown 2.0 which was imposed to contain the spread of the highly infectious novel coronavirus.
The country is witnessing a steady rise in cases every day by recording more than 1200 cases every day.
The number of COVID-19 cases in India has surged to 23,077, including 718 deaths, the Union Health Ministry said this morning.
1,684 new cases were reported 37 people died in the last 24 hours, according to Union Health Ministry data.
4,748 people who were infected with COVID-19 have been discharged or cured of the virus.
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