New Delhi (NVI): A Pune-based molecular diagnostics company has been able to develop testing kit for faster confirmation of COVID-19 cases, a major development that may help in India’s fight against coronavirus.
Mylab Discovery Solutions Pvt Ltd, which specialises in molecular diagnostic kits, has created an indigenous solution to test patients for COVID-19, as per media reports.
The company on Monday said that it has received commercial approval from authorities for its COVID-19 test kit, and can manufacture over 15,000 testing kits per day.
World Health Organisation has been stressing on the importance of tests to fight the pandemic, which has so far claimed ten lives in India.
Around 500 people have been tested positive for the virus in the country so far. Experts are bracing for a sharp increase fearing it may have spread across the country and also pointed out to a low level of testing in the country.
Mylab’s COVID-19 test kit screens and detects the infection within 2.5 hours as compared with over 7 hours taken by current protocols.
The approvals from the National Institute of Virology, Indian Council of Medical Research and Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO) were received after a test sampling on patients at Mumbai”s Kasturba Hospital which is the nodal location for treating Coronavirus cases.
The Mylab kit was selected along with a solution offered by a German company for the tests.
India has been using kits prepared by the state-run National Institute of Virology (NIV), but it was the fears over the increase in numbers which made private sector interventions in manufacturing necessary.
The testing kits done by NIV are costing up to Rs 4,500 per sample if we include both screening and confirmation, Mylabs is confident of selling the kits at a fourth of that cost.
A team of four founders and investors have invested over Rs 25 crore in the company till now and there are no external investors.
Meanwhile, the company is also in the process of creating similar test kits for HIV, hepatitis-B and tuberculosis.
