New Delhi, June 1 (IANS): As the country becomes self reliant in manufacturing RT-PCR testing kits, adding to the arsenal in India's fight against COVID-19, Mumbai-based speciality diagnostic company iGenetic Diagnostics and Thane-based Biogenomics have jointly developed RT-PCR testing kits.

The speciality of this RT-PCR testing kit is 100 per cent concordance to true positives and true negatives. The kits have received approval from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune. Both the companies are now jointly working on manufacturing and distribution of the kits across the country. The kits are expected to be available in the market within a few weeks.

"India has already begun conducting more than 1 lakh tests per day and our kits will offer a boost to the efforts of ramping up the testing capability further. The RT-PCR test kits have been approved after satisfying the stringent guidelines of ICMR and NIV that squeeze the chances of a false positive or a false negative to zero. These kits are better than global kits in terms of quality, adaptability, and price," said Arunima Patel, Founder and CEO, iGenetic Diagnostics.

The company is already known for developing in-house testing for various complex infections, including PCR tests for community-acquired pneumonia, TB, septicaemia, meningitis, and various CNS infections while Biogenomics is a young, rapidly-growing biopharmaceutical firm in Chennai.

The kits take 6 hours for diagnosis of COVID-19 including extraction. At the same time, this one will be cheap for sure. Currently the production has started and it will be open for the government and any healthcare organization and hospitals etc.

"We are proud to be able to join forces in this fight against a raging pandemic. "We have done extensive validation in-house while developing the kit - the design and development is an intricate process that requires significant expertise and resources," said Dr Archana Krishnan, founder director of BioGenomics.