Coronavirus: Meet The Woman Behind India's First Testing Kit

Virologist Minal Dakhave Bhosale has provided India with a coronavirus testing kit that delivers results in just two and a half hours. That too, being in the very last leg of her pregnancy. It is due to the efforts of her and her team, that Mylab Discovery of Pune became the first Indian firm to get full approval to make and sell testing kits. On Thursday, these testing kits manufactured in India reached the market. These kits will drastically reduce the testing time for coronavirus from six to seven hours taken by the imported kits, as per Bhosale, Mylab's research and development chief. A BBC report celebrates Bhosale's breakthrough and notes that this is what could help change the sluggish testing for coronavirus in India. Could this prove to be critical for rapid detection and containment of COVID-19 outbreak in India?

It was an emergency, so I took this on as a challenge. I have to serve my nation. - Minal Dakhave Bhosale

According to the report, Bhosale headed the team which was tasked with designing Patho Detect- the coronavirus testing kit. Moreover, Bhosale and her team delivered the kit in six weeks, ahead of the estimated three to four months. "If you carry out 10 tests on the same sample, all 10 results should be same," said Bhosale, adding, "And we achieved that. Our kit was perfect." As per Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) Mylab is the only Indian company to have achieved 100 percent results.

Every Mylab kit costs 1200 rupees and can test 100 samples. The cost of kits that India has been importing is around 4,500 rupees.

Also Read: ICMR guidelines for Coronavirus

The kit was submitted for evaluation by the National Institute of Virology (NIV) on 18 March. In the evening, she submitted the proposal to the Indian FDA and the drugs control authority CDSCO for commercial approval. Within an hour of submitting the proposal for FDA approval, she got admitted to a hospital for a c-section and the very next day, Minal delivered her daughter.

"It was an emergency, so I took this on as a challenge. I have to serve my nation," said Bhosale.

Picture Credit: BBC