New Delhi: The National Institute of Virology, Pune has successfully developed an antibody test which will be vital in India’s fight against COVID-19. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)-National Institute of Virology (NIV) at Pune has developed the indigenous IgG ELISA test "COVID KAVACH ELISA" and has validated it for antibody detection for COVID-19.

Antibody tests detect if a person has antibodies to disease. These are antibodies produced by our own immune system to fight disease. The presence of antibodies tells whether a person has already had the disease and whether they are likely to have immunity to the disease because the body now recognises the virus.

According to a PTI report, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on a statement said, “The robust indigenous IgG ELISA test for antibody detection developed by ICMR-NIV, Pune will play a critical role in surveillance of proportion of the population exposed to SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus infection.”

In a thread of tweets by Vardhan, he highlighted that the indigenous test can run 90 samples in one run in 2.5 hours.

The indigenous ELISA test will be cost-effective, sensitive, rapid, and a large number of samples can be tested at any level of a clinical setting, public health centers, and hospitals. The ICMR has partnered with Zydus Cadila for the mass production of the ELISA test kits. India has had to import most of the equipment from other countries too, which has been time-consuming. Seeing that most of the tests rapid tests were faulty ICMR had to cancel about half a million COVID-19 tests.

Meanwhile, A DRDO lab in Hyderabad has developed a Contactless Sanitisation Cabinet called Defence Research Ultraviolet Sanitizer or DRUVS it had been designed to sanitize mobile phones, iPads, laptops, currency notes, challans etc. The contactless feature of this cabinet makes it essential to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

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