Diagnostic Kits for COVID-19 By CCMB May Soon Come Up
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Diagnostic Kits for COVID-19 By CCMB May Soon Come Up

CCMB is additionally planning to culture the COVID-19 virus 

The World Health Organisation (WHO) urges that widescale “testing, testing, and testing” is vital as an early diagnosis to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and may help save lives. To develop an accurate and cost-efficient diagnostic kit for vast distribution, the researches at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) is working hard as per the call of WHO.

Director of CCMB, Dr. R K Mishra said, “We are aiding our incubating companies, they have also come out with ideas and we are supporting them. We are validating and testing the COVID-19 test kits proposed by them. We may manufacture some great diagnostic kit and everything goes well it may take around 2-3 weeks. The most crucial and important points of the kit are its Quality and Accuracy. The diagnostic kits for COVID-19 kits will be approved only if it gives 100% results.

The price of the kit is also being considered by the organization. Dr. Mishra said, “The estimate of the kit is that the test must be less than Rs 1000. We are additionally thinking about kits which are

as affordable as Rs 400-500, yet currently, we can not guarantee that, as it is a different itinerary and needs even more standardization”.

Culturing the COVID-19 virus is also planned by CCMB. Dr. Mishra stated, “The organization has obtained the approvals from the government and the organization has facilities for this as well, and they are yet to obtain samples and kits to initiate the process”. He added, “In the intervening time, our facilities are established and we are in fact educating and training the people who are going for testing in various other recognized places in the city”. In Telangana state, there are 5 government assigned testing centers and CCMB has trained 25 people who will be going to do the testing in these centers.

Nizam’s Institute Of Medical Sciences (NIMS) Hyderabad, Osmania General Hospital, Gandhi Hospital, the Warangal Hospital, and Sir Ronald Ross Institute of Tropical and Communicable Diseases or the Fever Hospital and are the few labs where the COVID-19 screening will be carried out. The Centre for DNA Finger Printing and Diagnostics (CDFD) is most likely to be added to this group

Another facet of combating the virus is the development of vaccine and drug development. But CCMB is not working with the vaccine and drug development as of now. Dr. Mishra said, “We have no expertise in working with this. Nonetheless, we will try to set up a system to use it for screening when the virus is being cultured”. He told that maybe the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT), CCMB’s sister organization is working for the repurposing of drugs as making a new drug is a long-term process.

Author : Sruthi S