The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has signed an MoU with Reliance to develop a new RT-LAMP COVID-19 diagnostic kit, which is cheap and gives a quick result, said Director-General Dr Shekhar C Mande on Wednesday.
COVID-19 RT-LAMP (Reverse Transcriptase-Loop Mediated Isothermal Amplification) test is a nucleic acid-based test carried out from nasal or throat swab samples from the patients. The test has been developed and successfully demonstrated using synthetic templates.
Talking about the test, Dr Mande said that "RT-LAMP test is cheap because you don't need to have instrument cost. It's also quite quick. You can actually take it into different areas. You can very quickly take it into the rural area." The CSIR on Tuesday had announced that the Institute of Integrative Medicine in Jammu has tied up with Reliance Industries Ltd to develop and scale-up a new RT-LAMP based COVID-19 diagnostic kit.
Dr Mande said that the new testing kit "could cost between Rs 100 and Rs 200. It will take less than an hour for a test to do. Within one hour, we can get the result." Talking about the difference between Feluda test and RT-LAMP kit, Dr Mande said: "Technological basis of Feluda kit and RT-LAMP kit is different. Faluda is based on technique call crisper cash, while RT-LAMP is based on RT-PCR. There is isothermal PCR. So, the technology of both kits is different." "RT PCR requires a specialised machine. The first step is a reverse transcription that is common to both RT-PCR as well as RT-LAMP. The second step is once DNA is made from RNA, the PCR quantitative to PCR machine does three cycles of temperature," added he.
The CSIR-DG further said: "In this condition, you do something at 92 degrees; you do something at 55 degrees; you do something at 73 degrees, and you keep cycling between these three temperatures about 25 and 30 times, and in each cycle the number of DNA molecules doubles and you measure. That is in the fluorescent level. So that is a base of RT-PCR."
ICMR asks states and UTs to cut testing charges
New Delhi: The Indian Council of Medical Research on Wednesday wrote to all states and Union Territories about reducing the price for conducting the test for the diagnosis of COVID-19.
In a letter, dated May 25, the Director General of the ICMR Balram Bhargava told chief secretaries of all states and UTs since the testing supplies are stabilizing and are being locally procured as against the earlier situation when all supplies were imported, the states should negotiate with private labs and fix a price for the test.
"The earlier suggested upper ceiling of Rs 4,500, vide letter dated March 17 may not be applicable now and, therefore, all state governments/UT administrations are advised to negotiate with private labs and fix mutual agreeable price for samples being sent by the government also for private individuals desirous of testing by these labs,” said Bhargava.
Speaking to IANS, the ICMR PRO said, “Fixing the price for the test is up to states already. In the initial stages of the corona breakout, there was a crisis of the testing kits and reagents as we relied heavily on import.”
