Indian scientists develop first paper strip test for Covid-19 patients

Team Udayavani, Apr 4, 2020, 1:56 PM IST

Indian scientists from the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) have successfully developed a low-cost, paper strip test which can detect the raging coronavirus within an hour.

It is said that, the paper strip test uses of Crispr-Cas9 – a cutting-edge gene-editing tool- to test COVID-19 in the samples of suspected people. The paper-strip test targets and determines the genomic sequences of the COVID-19.

Sources claim that this can be performed using standard equipment available in every pathological laboratory, unlike most of the rapid tests which require dedicated machinery.

The kit resembles a portable paper-strip test used to confirm pregnancy and it does not need any specific skills to carry out the testing.

This paper strip-based test kit has been developed by a team led by Dr. Sauvik Maity, scientist at IGIB and Dr. Debajyoti Chakraborty. Current test of COVID-19 requires 8-10 hours for detection of corona virus. But his kit can detect corona virus in less than an hour.