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The Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad has developed the country's first affordable rapid electronic COVID-19 RNA test kit. The kit will be available to be used at home following commercialization and approval of the ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research).

Shiv Gobing Singh, Prof of Electrical Dept at IIT-H, alongwith his team, has developed the kit 'COVIDHome' which is an AI-powered COVID-19 test.

The team also claim that the test kit can produce results, for both asymptomatic and symptomatic patients, within 30 minutes. The kit does not require RT-PCR, a BSL2 Lab Facility, and an expert HR so it can also be used at home without any expert supervision.

The validation of the COVID-19 RNA test kit has been performed by the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology to detect the SARS-Cov-2 virus in the in-house sample and hospital sample. The sample's positivity & negativity were confirmed by the RT-PCR method. According to the result, the validation report marked the kit's efficiency 94.2%, specificity 98.2%, and sensitivity 91.3%.

The cost of each test is Rs. 400 which will be reduced to Rs. 300/ test with mass production.

Prof Singh informed that the main objective of the team, while developing the kit, was to cut the transmission chain through affordable testing. Singh added, "We have already filed for a patent for transfer of technology for mass production".