COVIRAP by IIT Kharagpur has won the certification from Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

COVIRAP is a diagnotic machine developed by IIT Kharagpur researchers which has been successfully validated for its efficacy in detection of COVID-19.

COVIRAP by IIT Kharagpur gets great ICMR certification

The device was developed by a team of researchers lead by Professor Suman Chakraborty, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Kharagpur and Dr. Arindam Mondal, Assistant Professor, School of Bio-Science, IIT Kharagpur.

The happy news amidst this pleasant development is that various commercial units have already approached the institute for commercial licensing of COVIRAP by IIT Kharagpur so that this innovation can be used to serve people on a larger scale.

A demonstration video on how COVIRAP by IIT Kharagpur works is available on the link ‘https://fromsmash.com/Demo-Video-IIT-Kharagpurs-COVIRAP’

Certification was provided to COVIRAP by IIT Kharagpur only after passing through a rigorous testing by authorised ICMR laboratory.

COVIRAP by IIT Kharagpur has been designed in a way that it can be easily used and produce the result within one hour.

This new testing method implements a highly reliable and accurate molecular diagnostic procedure that can be conducted in an ultra-low-cost portable device unit COVIRAP by IIT Kharagpur.

The test results obtained by using this COVIRAP by IIT Kharagpur can be generated through a custom made mobile app for dissemination without requiring manual interpretation.

Praising the effort that went into bringing out COVIRAP by IIT Kharagpur Union Education Minister Dr. Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank said he was glad the researchers from IIT Kharagpur have achieved the goal of Atmanirbhar Bharat through this medical technology innovation.

This would go on impacting the lives of many in rural India as the device is portable and can be operated on a very low energy supply.

The biggest advantage is that even minimally trained rural youth can operate COVIRAP by IIT Kharagpur, said Union Minister.

Union Education Minister further said COVIRAP by IIT Kharagpur has made high-quality and accurate COVID testing affordable for the common people with a testing cost of around Rs 500 which can further be reduced through government intervention.

COVIRAP by IIT Kharagpur can be developed at a cost of less than Rs 10,000 with minimal infrastructural requirement making the technology affordable to common people.

The testing process in COVIRAP by IIT Kharagpur is completed within one hour.

‘I congratulate Professor V.K. Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur, and the research team led by Professor Suman Chakraborty and Dr. Arindam Mondal for this path-breaking innovation taking molecular diagnostics from high-end labs to the field, said Union Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank.

The project involving the development of COVIRAP by IIT Kharagpur obtained financial support from the institute in late April this year as Professor V.K. Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur, decided to establish a dedicated fund to support COVID-19 related research and product development as per an initiative by the Ministry of Education, Government of India following the vision of Dr. Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, Union Education Minister.

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Speaking about COVIRAP by IIT Kharagpur, Professor V. K. Tewari said this (COVIRAP by IIT Kharagpur) is indeed one of the greatest contributions in the history of medical science, particularly in the area of virology and is well set to replace PCR-based tests to a large extent.

Speaking about commercialising COVIRAP by IIT Kharagpur Dr. Mamta Chawla Sarkar, an internationally acclaimed virologist who oversaw the patient trials on behalf of ICMR-National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED) said a detailed scrutiny of the testing results has clearly shown that this assay holds the capability of detecting extremely low levels of viral loads that any other method based on similar principles of testing, even those from the most celebrated research groups across the world, could not come up with so far.

In practice, this means that very early stages of infection can be detected, thereby isolating the patient and arresting the uncontrolled spread of infection in the community via asymptomatic patients, said Dr. Mamta.

Director of ICMR-NICED Dr. Shanta Dutta said while overseeing the testing and validation I was very impressed with the portable low-cost machine unit that can truly be a game-changer for COVID-19 diagnostics at peripheral laboratories with the support of unskilled human resources as operators.

This now needs a rapid commercial scale-up to cater to the needs of the underserved population. ICMR-NICED will be pleased to facilitate support for further improvisations in the method towards even superior performance, said Dr. Shanta.

COVIRAP by IIT Kharagpur has been subjected to rigorous testing protocols as per ICMR guidelines, at ICMR-NICED, an Institute authorized by ICMR.

The tests conducted there have revealed that the results from this new assay are of standards comparable to the celebrated RT-PCR tests, with a remarkably high level of specificity and sensitivity, the two common parameters used as indicators of efficacy of any diagnostic test.

ICMR-NICED has further certified the test to be extremely user-friendly.

Notably, the number of tests per one-hour batch in a single machine unit can be further increased to much higher limits, for the purpose of testing on a mass scale.

Professor Suman Chakraborty said the patented machine unit has not only been proven to be robust during patient sample testing but also extremely flexible and generic.

This means that other than COVID-19 testing, many other tests, falling under the category of Isothermal Nucleic Acid-based Tests (INAT), can be performed in the same machine.

In other words, influenza, malaria, dengue, Japanese encephalitis, tuberculosis and many other infectious, as well as vector-borne diseases, can be tested using the same machine.

This will virtually minimize the need for thermal cyclers or real-time PCR machines, without sacrificing the expected high standards of a molecular diagnostic test, he said.

Assistant Professor Dr. Arindam Mondal said during the testing phase of patient samples, all kits, exclusively developed at IIT Kharagpur were transported in an uncontrolled environment for hours to the testing unit, which shows high levels of stability of the reagents that are being used for the testing.

Professor Suman Chakraborthy said today, it is COVID-19, yesterday, it was leprosy and tuberculosis, tomorrow, it will be something else.

This technology is all set to create a revolution in rapid and low-cost detection of all these, by bringing high-end molecular diagnostics from the lab to the field.

The impact of this, therefore, is long-lasting, empowered by the capability of detecting unforeseen pandemics in the coming years that may potentially endanger human lives time and again, said Professor Suman Chakraborty.

S. Vishnu Sharma

S Vishnu Sharmaa now works with collegechalo.com in the news team. His work involves writing articles related to the education... (Full bio)