This Woman Scientist has a big hand in developing India’s first COVID-19 self testing kit

Rakhi Sharma / Raipur / Pune: COVID-19 self testing kit: India has so far been involved in the global fight against COVID-19 virus, where infection testing of very few people behind a large population has been ensured. India has also been criticized globally for this. With only 6.8 tests per million, India has been counted as the country with the lowest test rates in the world so far, but now India can strengthen its position against coronavirus infection.

A Pune-based diagnostic firm has developed the country’s first test kit this week. All this was made possible by the efforts of a female virologist who developed a self-covid-19 kit and gave it to the country just hours before giving birth to her daughter. Mylab’s head of research and development, Minal dakhva Bhosle, along with his team developed a coronavirus test kit called Patho Detect in just six weeks.

Meenal was struggling with another deadline, along with the timeframe set to develop this test kit. She began work on the program in February, just a few days after leaving the hospital with complications of pregnancy. She said, “It was an emergency, so I took it as a challenge. I had to serve my country, ” she said, adding that his team of 10 people worked hard to make the project a success. Finally, She handed the kit to the National Institute of Virology (NIV) for evaluation on 18 March, just one day before giving birth to his daughter.

First Made-in-India COVID Test

India’s first coronavirus test kit entered the Indian markets on Thursday to increase the frequency of testing and confirm the COVID-19 infection. “Our kit gives the diagnosis in two and a half hours while the imported test kit takes six to seven hours,” Minal said in an interview to an English newspaper.

Har molecular diagnostic company also produces test kits for HIV, Hepatitis B and C and other diseases. Minal says it can supply 100,000 covid-19 test kits a week and produce up to 200,000 if needed. Each Mylab kit can test 100 samples and is priced at Rs 1,200, which is about a quarter of the Rs 4,500 paid by India for importing test kits from abroad.