The ‘COVIRAP,’ diagnostic machine evolved by the IIT Kharagpur researchers, for its efficacy in COVID-19 detection has been successfully validated by the Indian Council of Medical Research.
The innovation has made “high-quality and accurate COVID testing at a level of RT=PCR testing affordable for the common people with a testing cost of around ₹ 500/- which can further be reduced through government intervention.
We are dependent on RT-PCR for accurate testing of COVID-19 and whose results take time to come.This new testing method implements a highly reliable and accurate molecular diagnostic procedure that can be conducted in an ultra-low-cost portable device unit developed by the research team of IIT Kharagpur.
What is special about this affordable, portable and user-friendly testing machine is that with only just machine, testing of samples of several people can be done together. And there is no need for trained personnel to operate this machine. The test results are rendered via a custom-made mobile application for dissemination without requiring manual interpretation.
COVIRAP technique is also special as this technique is capable of detecting extremely low levels of viral loads. In practice, this means that very early stages of infection can be detected, thereby isolating the patient and arresting the uncontrolled spread of infection in the community via asymptomatic patients. Through COVIRAP, testing of other diseases like influenza, malaria, dengue, TB and several other diseases can be done apart from COVID-19.
Nishant Saurabh’s Report