IITH develops cheaper COVID-19 testing kit ‘COVIHOME’

This test kit can produce results within 30 minutes for both symptomatic and asymptomatic patients, a release said.

An Artificial Intelligence-powered test that can be performed at an affordable cost at home has been developed by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad (IITH) led by Prof. Shiv Govind Singh of the department of electrical engineering, it was announced on Thursday. This test kit can produce results within 30 minutes for both symptomatic and asymptomatic patients and the major benefit of this testing kit is that it does not require RT-PCR (Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction), an expert human resource, and a BSL-2 lab facility for the extraction of RNA, so it has potential for one to take the test at home without expert supervision, said an official press release. CSIR-Centre for Cellular & Molecular Biology (CCMB) has performed the validation of the rapid RNA electronic diagnostic device for detection of SARS-Cov-2 virus in the swab samples independently with the in-house samples and hospital samples as advised by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). These samples were confirmed for their positivity or negativity by the RT-PCR method. The validation report confirmed the kit’s efficiency 94.2%, sensitivity 91.3%, and specificity 98.2%.