ICMR Develops Testing Kit To Detect Covid-19 With Omicron Variant In 2 Hours

Till now it usually took around 3-4 days to detect the virus. The newly developed testing kits by the scientists at RMRC will enable in detecting the Omicron variant of Covid-19 in real time. 

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New Delhi: A team of scientists at Regional Medical Research Centre (RMRC) for the Northeast region of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) at Dibrugarh have designed a testing kit which will detect the virus with new strain in 2 hours, reported ANI. 

Till now it usually took around 3-4 days to detect the virus from the kits that were currently available in the market. The newly developed testing kits by the scientists at RMRC will enable them to detect the Omicron variant of Covid-19 in real time. 

The team was lead by scientist Dr Biswajyoti Borkakoty who said, “"ICMR-RMRC, Dibrugarh, has designed and developed a hydrolysis probe-based real-time RT-PCR assay for detection of the new Omicron variant (B.1.1.529) SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) that can detect the new variant within 2 hours. This is important because as of now a minimum of 36 hours is required for targeted sequencing and 4 to 5 days for whole-genome sequencing to detect the variant."

The kit designed by ICMR-RMRC Dibrugarh is being produced in bulk quantities by an indigenous Kolkata-based company, GCC Biotech on a public-private partnership model, the report stated. 

"The kit has been tested against specific synthetic gene fragments of Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 within two different highly specific unique regions of the spike protein and also reference wild type control synthetic gene fragments. Internal validation has shown that the tests are 100 per cent accurate," Dr Borkakoty said. 

A team led by Dr Borkakoty in 2020 was successful in isolating the Covid-19 virus and thus the ICMS-RMRC became the third government laboratory to achieve the feat. 

Currently India recorded 33 cases of the Covid-19 with the Omicron variant with states including Delhi, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Gujarat.