The researchers at IIT Kharagpur have developed ‘COVIRAP,’ the Covid-19 diagnostic test technology, which is fairly easy to conduct and affordable as well and can produce results within one hour. This COVIRAP technology has been successfully validated for its efficacy in COVID-19 detection by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and been granted certification, after rigorous testing with patient samples by an authorized ICMR laboratory.
The researchers at IIT Kharagpur have developed ‘COVIRAP,’ the Covid-19 diagnostic test technology, which is fairly easy to conduct and affordable as well and can produce results within one hour.
This COVIRAP technology has been successfully validated for its efficacy in COVID-19 detection by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and been granted certification, after rigorous testing with patient samples by an authorized ICMR laboratory.
This testing technology is comparable to the celebrated RT-PCR tests, and will just cost the common people with a testing cost of around Rs 500. COVIRAP is a cuboid-shaped portable testing device that can deliver results in an hour, making it an effective tool to scale up coronavirus screening in peripheral and rural areas. This machine can be developed at a cost of less than Rs 10,000 with minimal infrastructural requirement making the technology affordable to common people.
The testing process in this new machine is completed within one hour. This implies influenza, malaria, dengue, Japanese encephalitis, tuberculosis and many other infectious, as well as vector-borne diseases, can be tested using the same machine. This will virtually minimise the need for thermal cyclers or real-time PCR machines, without sacrificing the expected high standards of a molecular diagnostic test.
