India has approved the commercial launch of Satyajit Ray’s popular fictional character “Feluda,” a Covid-19 test developed by the Tata Group and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (CSIR-IGIB) on Saturday.
The test uses an indigenously-developed Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) technology for detection of SARS-CoV-2’s genomic sequence.
CRISPR, a technology developed by CSIR-IGIB, is a genome editing technology used to diagnose diseases, reports NDTV.
The Tata CRISPR test achieves accuracy levels of traditional RT-PCR tests with quicker turnaround time, less expensive equipment and better ease of use.
The effort is the result of a fruitful collaboration between the scientific community and the industry.
The Tata Group has worked closely with CSIR-IGIB and ICMR to create a high-quality test that will help the nation ramp up Covid-19 testing quickly and economically, with a made in India product that is safe, reliable, affordable and accessible.
The Tata CRISPR test is the world's first diagnostic test to deploy a specially adapted Cas9 protein to successfully detect the virus causing Covid-19, it said.
India’s first CRISPR Covid-19 test FELUDA, developed by @IGIBSocial and @TataGroup has been approved for use in India by @DCGI. Congratulations to the entire team! @PMOIndia @drharshvardhan @PrinSciAdvGoI @shekhar_mande @ICMRDELHI @AnuragAgrawalMD @Debojyo04532898
— CSIR (@CSIR_IND) September 19, 2020
"The Tata Group has worked closely with CSIR-IGIB and ICMR to create a high-quality test that will help the nation ramp up Covid-19 testing quickly and economically, with a "Made in India" product that is safe, reliable, affordable and accessible," The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) said in a statement.
The innovation in the technology has been done by a research team led by two Bengali scientists Debojyoti Chakraborty and Souvik Maiti.
Meanwhile, India's coronavirus case tally surged to 5.4 million as it added 92,605 new infections in the last 24 hours, data from the federal health ministry showed on Sunday, reports Reuters.
The country has posted the highest single-day caseload in the world since early August, and lags behind only the United States, which has 6.9 million cases in terms of total infections.
A total of 1,113 people died of Covid-19 in the last 24 hours, the health ministry said, taking mortalities to 86,774, which is a relatively low 1.6% of all cases.
