Made-in-India COVID-19 Test Kit

The COVID-19 test kit developed by Mylab Discovery Solution Pvt Ltd has become the first Made-in-India kit to receive commercial approval.

About the Kit

The Mylab PathoDetect COVID-19 Qualitative PCR kit was developed by Pune based by Mylab Discovery Solution Pvt Ltd- a firm specialising in development of molecular diagnostic kits. It was developed in a record time of 6 weeks. The kit has received approval from the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation and the Indian FDA.

Advantages

Some of the advantages of the kit are:

• The test is based on sensitive PCR technology and hence can detect even early stages of infection.
• The test is reported to have high accuracy.
• The kits can screen and detect infection in 2.5 hours (currently it takes over 7 hours per test).
• The firm has capacity to manufacture 1 lakh kits per week and this can be scaled up.
• Each kit can test 100 patients.
• The kit would only cost 1/4^th of the current procurement cost being spent.

Testing in India

The testing rate for COVID-19 is currently very low in India. India ranks the lowest in terms of testing per million people. Only 6.8 tests are being done per million population. Mostly, only high risk cases are being tested. Also, the test kits are being sourced from Germany in millions. This is disadvantageous due to import dependency and also the effect of disrupted air transport on the supplies.