First indigenous antibody-based testing kit

• National Institute of Virology, Pune, has developed India’s first indigenous antibody-based ELISA test kit – COVID KAVACH for diagnosis of novel Corona Virus.

About:

• The kit has displayed high sensitivity and accuracy in the validation tests at different sites. It can test around 90 samples in approximately two and a half hours. The technology has been transferred to pharmaceutical manufacturing companies for mass-scale production.

• This is the first time India has developed an indigenous Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) test for coronavirus. ELISA is routinely used for detecting HIV infection.

• The test will detect antibodies in blood samples that the body develops in response to infection by the SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus.

• The ELISA test developed by NIV gains significance as the rapid antibody tests imported from China were found to be unreliable and hence the States were instructed not to use them for detecting previous novel coronavirus infection.