Dr V Ravi and his team have developed the world’s first test kit, Omisure, that can detect the Omicron variant by combining S-gene target failure and S-gene mutation amplification
“Omisure was approved by the ICMR on December 30 , On 5th Jan Tata MD received the licence from the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation for commercial production
Dr Ravi told that Omisure is a regular PCR test and is compatible with all standard realtime PCR machines and ‘Omisure test will take about two-and-half hours’ .
It will cut down the waiting time for genome sequencing of Omicron patients, which is currently the practice and is delaying the results.
On the production capacity, he said the Tata MD plant at Sriperumbudur has the daily manufacturing capacity of two lakh kits
Dr also said "production will be ramped up to five lakh kits by the end of this month to meet the demand and We are also planning to export Omisure "
He also added "we will be filing for CE marking application for FDA emergency use authorisation". A total of 2,135 cases of Omicron variant have been detected in India
Source : Indianexpress/TOI