The ICMR researchers in Assam have developed a COVID-19 testing kit that can detect the Omicron variant in two hours. “As of now a minimum of 36 hours is required for targeted sequencing and 4-5 days for whole-genome sequencing to detect the variant,” said Dr Biswajyoti Borkakoty leading the ICMR team.
India currently has 33 cases of the Omicron variant. This may be a big relief for the travellers who have been struggling due to the increased wait time for test reports at the airports after fresh restrictions were brought in place to check the spread of the new variant.
The ICMR Dibrugarh team was working on this kit since November 24. They have tested and scanned this kit with over 1,000 samples of Covid patients, including some from other states who have been detected with Omicron. Currently, the licensing process of this test kit is underway, and is expected to be available for the lab from the next week.
ICMR-RMRC Dibrugarh has 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,” said Dr Biswajit Borkakoty.
“The kit is 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,” Dr Borkakoty said.
The kit developed by ICMR-RMRC Dibrugarh 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.
