CCMB working on cost-effective diagnostic kits for COVID-19, planning to culture virus

The Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) is working on the development of cost-effective and accurate diagnostic kits to deal with the threat of coronavirus spread and is also planning to culture COVID-19 virus.

CCMB director R K Mishra said that they were helping incubating companies.

"They have come out with ideas and we are supporting them. We are testing and validating the diagnostic kits proposed by them. We may come up with some good kits and it may take at least 2-3 weeks if everything goes well. Quality and accuracy of the kits are the most important things. If the kits give 100 per cent results, then only they will be approved," he said.

According to a release of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the CCMB is also keeping in mind the cost.

"Our estimate is that the test cost should be less than Rs 1,000. We are also thinking of kits which are as cheap as Rs 400-500 but at present, we cannot assure that as it is a different route and all this needs more standardisation," said Mishra.

He said the CCMB is also planning to culture the COVID-19 virus and the institution has facilities for this. Mishra said they have got approvals from the government but are yet to receive sample and kits to initiate the culture.

He said there are five government-designated testing centres in Telangana and CCMB has trained 25 people so that they can go and do the testing at these centres.