Two Indian firms iGenetic Diagnostics and BioGenomics have claimed to have jointly developed RT-PCR testing kits for COVID-19 with 100% concordance to true positives and true negatives.
The testing kits have received approval from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the National Institute of Virology (NIV), both the firms said in a statement.
BioGenomics will manufacture and distribute the kits which are expected to be available in the market within a few weeks.
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“India has already began testing 1 lakh people a day and our kits will offer a boost to the efforts of ramping up the testing capability further. The RT-PCR test kits have been approved after satisfying the stringent guidelines of ICMR and NIV that squeeze the chances of a false positive or a false negative to zero,” said Arunima Patel, founder and CEO, iGenetic Diagnostics in a statement.
“These kits are better than global kits in terms of quality, adaptability, and price. Having a dependable kit developed in the country is crucial these days. We partnered with BioGenomics due to their experience and expertise in manufacturing and marketing of biotechnology products,” she said.
“As research-minded professionals, we recognise the value of iGenetic contribution and its importance. The production of the kits is going on with full steam ahead and these will be available for use in next few weeks,” said Dr. Archana Krishnan, founder director, BioGenomics.
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iGenetic will continue to perform validations and testing of various batches of the kit and as per regulations will support BioGenomics in any additional development work the statement said.