The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in Dibrugarh, Assam has designed a testing kit that will be able to detect the virus in two hours time.

A team of scientists of Regional Medical Research Centre (RMRC) for the Northeast region, ICMR led by scientist Dr Biswajyoti Borkakoty said they 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 would help in early detection, which is currently important, as a minimum of 36 hours was required for targeted sequencing and 4 to 5 days for whole-genome sequencing to detect the variant. He further added that the kit had 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 had shown that the tests were 100 per cent accurate.

Previously, in July 2020 Dr. Borkakoty and his team had successfully managed to isolate the COVID-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2), making it the third government laboratory in the country to achieve the feat.

This kit is now being produced on a bulk basis by a 100 per cent made in India, a Kolkata-based company, GCC biotech on a public-private partnership (PPP) model and is very necessary as total number of Omicron cases in the country going up to more than 33. WHO, On November 26 named the new COVID-19 variant B.1.1.529 as Omicron.

Source: ET Healthworld