New Delhi: In a move that could help speed up tests for COVID-19, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi has developed a test kit, which has been cleared by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

“We started working on it by the end of January and got it ready in three months. We wanted to contribute to affordable low-cost diagnostics that could be used in large numbers,” said V Perumal, Professor at IIT-Delhi.

Perumal said that it is a swab testing kit.

“Testing will be cheaper than all existing devices,” he said, adding that the device is affordable for commercial production.

ICMR on April 23 approved detection assay for COVID-19, which has been developed by researchers at IIT-Delhi’s Kusuma School of Biological Sciences (KSBS).

“The assay has been validated at the ICMR with a sensitivity and specificity of 100 per cent. This makes IIT-Delhi the first academic institute to have obtained ICMR approval for a real-time PCR-based diagnostic assay,” read a statement from IIT-Delhi.

This is the first probe-free assay for COVID-19 approved by the ICMR and it will be useful for specific and affordable high throughput testing. It can easily be scaled up as it does not require fluorescent probes. The team is targeting large-scale deployment of the kit at affordable prices with suitable industrial partners as soon as possible.