COVID-19: Virologist delivers ‘twins’, Kit And A Kid..!

While researchers and doctors across the globe are trying hard to find a cure to the deadly Coronavirus, India’s Mylab has come up with an indigenous COVID-19 Testing Kit that allows Doctors to determine a case positive in just 2.5 hours. This could cut down on the wait time that the usual tests take, thus allowing more time for action.

The woman behind this testing kit decided to serve the nation while battling with a deadline herself!

Chief of Mylab's R&D and Virologist Minal Dakhave Bhosale, is a woman behind the first testing kit for coronavirus in India. She headed the team that designed the testing kit 'Patho Detect'. The project was completed in a matter of six weeks. This could have taken a few months under normal circumstances.

Speaking to a daily she said, "Our kit gives the diagnosis in two and a half hours while the imported testing kits take six-seven hours."

In the month of February, when few COVID-19 cases came to India, she took it as a challenge to serve the people of her country and started working on the programme. This was just days after leaving a hospital with a pregnancy complication.

She also added that her team of 10 worked 'very hard' to make the project a success.

For a kit to get approval, you must carry out 10 tests on the same sample and all 10 results should be the same. The team achieved that for their kit. They checked and re-checked all the parameters. Just before heading to the hospital for her delivery Bhosle submitted the evaluation report and proposal to the Indian FDA and India's Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation.

Mylab Discovery Pune became the first Indian firm to get full approval to make and sell these testing kits. It shipped the first batch of 150 kits to diagnostic labs in Pune, Mumbai, Delhi, Goa and Bengaluru this week.

Speaking to the daily, Dr Gautam Wankhede, Mylab's director for medical affairs said that the next batch will be sent out on Monday. (Inputs From BBC News)

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