“COROSURE”: IIT Delhi launches world’s most affordable COVID-19 Test Kit

On the 15th of July, corosure was launched in New Delhi. Corosure is a low-cost coronavirus test kit developed by the Indian Institute of Technology. IIT claims it to be the world’s most affordable diagnostic kit for COVID-19. 

The IIT Delhi developed RT-PCR assay‘s base price is three hundred and ninety-nine rupees according to the officials of IIT. The cost per test might go up to six hundred and fifty rupees after adding RNA isolation and laboratory charges, and even then it is recognized as considerably cheaper in comparison to the presently availed kits in the market. Within 3 hours, the kit delivers the result. 

Corosure was launched by Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, the HRD Minister and this will now be available at authorized testing labs for use. Mr. Nishank said at the launch that “The corosure kit has been developed indigenously and is much cheaper than other kits. The country requires cheap and reliable testing for the country which can help control the pandemic. The kit has received ICMR approval with the highest score and DCGI approved with very high sensitivity and specificity.” As this kit is completely developed in India, the HRD Minister proudly said that this innovative development is a step towards Make in India.

IIT Delhi is the first educational institution for the coronavirus testing method and getting a nod for the same from ICMR. The institution has given a non-exclusive open license to ten companies for the commercial test but at five hundred rupees for the assay needed for testing.

Newtech Medical Devices has been commercializing the Corosure kit.

The Corosure kit is getting a higher platform than other kits because of its low price. This kit is “probe free” and others are “probe-based”. The development of this probe free kit reduced the cost of testing with no compromise with the property of accuracy, according to the team at IIT Delhi. 

The team of IIT Delhi identified unique regions (short stretches of ribonucleic acid i.e. RNA) in SARS-COV-2 and COVID-19. The lead member of the team, Professor Vivekanandan Perumal said that “These unique regions are not present in other human coronaviruses providing an opportunity to specifically detect COVID-19.” Professor Vivekanandan also said that “Primer sets, targeting unique regions in the spike protein of COVID-19, were designed and tested using real-time polymerase chain reaction. The primers designed by the group specifically bind to regions conserved in over 200 fully sequenced COVID-19 genomes. The sensitivity of this in-house assay is comparable to that of commercially available kits.”

According to the data of the Union Health Ministry, the nation has witnessed a single-day huge jump of twenty-nine thousand four hundred and twenty-nine which directly increased the tally to nine lakhs thirty-six thousand one hundred and eighty-one yesterday. With this, the death tally hoped to more than twenty-four thousand cases wth 582 new fatalities. Yesterday was the 4th consecutive day that witnessed an increase in corona positive cases by more than twenty-eight thousand. The country now shelters more than 3 lakh active cases with a recovery tally of more than 5 lakh.