Union Science and Technology Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan said the Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Science and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram, has developed a low-cost diagnostic test kit that can confirm COVID-19 in two hours.
SCTIMST, Trivandrum, is an Institution of National Importance, under the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India.
The detection time is 10 minutes, and the sample to result in time will be less than 2 hours. A total of 30 samples can be tested in a single batch in a single machine.
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
“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,” Vardhan tweeted.
An interview in Malayalam, with the Director Dr. Asha Kishore.