Mumbai Firm Seeks Nod For Its Rapid Test To Diagnose Covid-19

MUMBAI: After the debacle over faulty Chinese test kits, there is good news on rapid testing for Covid. City firm TRANSASIA Bio-Medicals on Monday applied for central clearance to become the first in the country to offer the ELISA blood test to detect Covid even as American multinational Abbot announced it would ship laboratory-based antibody test kits to India by mid-May.

Antibody testing is important to tell if someone has been previously infected. It can be used to detect an infection’s spread in containment zones.

TRANSASIA is the second firm in the world to develop the test for Covid. Its kits, which can perform 100 tests in one hour, have been used in US, Europe and South America, and have US FDA clearance.

“The tests are fast, affordable and accurate,’’ said S Vazirani, who founded the firm here and Erba Mannheim in US. “It is easy to operate, doesn’t require machines. As it is widely used to test for HIV and hepatitis, lab technicians are familiar with it,’’ he added. The company said the tests will be available for Rs400-500 each. “Five lakh tests were used in Italy. Brazil used 2 lakh last week,’’ he said.

Meanwhile, Abbott said it would begin shipping its antibody test to India and will scale up to meet demand. “The test has demonstrated specificity and sensitivity of greater than 99% 14 days of more after symptoms started,’’ said the company.

Abbott’s laboratory-based antibody test kit identifies IgG antibody, a protein the body produces in late stages of infection and may remain up to months and possibly years after a person has recovered. Last week, Union health minister Harsh Vardhan said local companies would develop antibody tests in bulk by May-end. Council of Scientific & Industrial Research’s Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (New Delhi) developed a paper-based rapid test strip for Covid-19 costing around Rs 500.-Times Of India