COVID-19: DCGI approves CSIR’s paper-based testing kit
Sep 20, 2020
New Delhi, Sep 20 (ANI): Council of Scientific and Industrial Research on September 20 informed that Drugs Controller General of India has approved CSIR’s paper-based testing kit called Feluda for COVID-19. CSIR, Director General S Mande said, “Our Delhi CSIR lab's been working on studying CRISPR-Cas immunity. They have experience of working in this particular area before COVID-19 and could repurpose the thing for COVID and developed a paper-based testing kit called Feluda and got formal approval from DCGA. Mande further explained the functioning of the paper based test. “It's different as RTPCR detects RNA and amplifies it using a polymerase chain reaction that is costly. This paper-based test also detects RNA but by a CRISPR guided system. The paper lights up if there is any virus RNA to show a sample is positive, in 45 minutes,” he added.
