Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Friday asserted that a Kerala-based institute has developed a low-cost diagnostic test kit that can confirm coronavirus COVID-19 in two hours. A total of 30 samples can be tested in a single batch on a single machine, he added.
The diagnostic test kit developed by the Thiruvananthapuram's Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Science and Technology can detect coronavirus in 10 minutes, and the sample to result time will be less than two hours, Vardhan tweeted.
Taking to micro-blogging site Twitter, he said, "The confirmatory diagnostic test, which detects the N Gene of SARS_COV_2 using reverse transcriptase loop-mediated amplification of viral nucleic acid, will be one of the world's first few, if not the first of its kind in the world."
Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences & Tech, Trivandrum, an Institute of National Importance, of the @IndiaDST, has developed a diagnostic test kit that can confirm #COVID19 in 2 hours at a low cost.@PMOIndia @WHO #IndiaFightsCorona #Covid_19 pic.twitter.com/N82laLnL48
— Dr Harsh Vardhan (@drharshvardhan) April 17, 2020
"Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences & Tech, Trivandrum, an Institute of National Importance, of the DST India, has developed a diagnostic test kit that can confirm COVID-19 in 2 hours at a low cost," he tweeted.
"The detection time is 10 minutes, and the sample to result in time (from RNA extraction in swab to RT-LAMP detection time) will be less than 2 hours. A total of 30 samples can be tested in a single batch in a single machine," he further tweeted.
