Kerala’s Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology develops rapid antibody test kit
The Kerala government had only a few days ago spoken about rapid antibody testing to check for community transmission of COVID-19. Now, the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB) in Thiruvananthapuram has developed a rapid test kit, which is to be validated by the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune.
“The preliminary testing has been done. It is incubated by a company called ubio in Kochi. It is in our campus in Kochi,” says Dr Radhakrishnan of the RGCB, whose team has developed the kit.
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had on Thursday allowed the use of rapid antibody kits in COVID-19 hotspots (where a large number of cases are reported). ICMR in its interim advisory noted that those who tested positive in the rapid test would still need to undertake the Reverse Transcription-Polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), which is the only test that can identify and diagnose the novel coronavirus.
“Antibody positives should be confirmed by RT-PCR (reverse transcription-PCR) using throat/nasal swab, while antibody negatives should be home quarantined," ICMR said.
The advantage of the rapid antibody kits is that at 30-45 minutes, its processing time is a lot faster than the RT-PCR, which can take 24 hours for a report.
Explaining how the rapid test works, Dr Radhakrishnan, says,“The body develops two antibodies as part of reacting to the presence of virus – immunoglobulin M (igM) and immunoglobulin G (igG). The igM appears on the third day of infection and the person need not be symptomatic then; they need not have a fever. But the rapid test can detect the antibody and then we can detect the case early and quarantine the person.”
He adds, “The other antibody – igG – comes when the body really starts fighting back and the virus starts to clear. The person who has igG has already survived the disease. This would, in the case of usual coronavirus and flu virus, mean that a new infection would not develop for another six months. But we cannot say for sure if it is the same case for the new coronavirus.”
The team has received the production license from the government of India and once the NIV validates the test, they would start mass production.
The RGCB is also among the testing centres in the state for COVID-19 and has the capacity to test even 3,000 samples a day using the RT-PCR kits.
“However, we need reagents (a substance used for chemical analysis) for that, just machines are not enough. There are seven real-time machines but the reagents cannot reach from outside without the domestic flights operating. We are doing lesser tests now. Yesterday (Thursday), 164 tests were done,” Dr Radhakrishnan says.