DRDO's Covid-19 test kit Dipcovan is 99% accurate, likely to cost Rs 75

By Anish Kumar | First Published May 21, 2021, 6:52 PM IST

Dipcovan offers a significantly faster turn-around time as it requires just 75 minutes to conduct the test without any cross-reactivity with other diseases.

After successfully developing the 2-deoxy-D-glucose or '2-DG' drug, the Defence Research and Development Organisation on Friday said it has developed an antibody detection-based kit 'DIPCOVAN', which can detect both spikes as well as nucleocapsid proteins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

It can also detect the virus with a high sensitivity of 97 per cent and specificity of 99 per cent.

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The kit has been developed in association with Vanguard Diagnostics Pvt Ltd, a development and manufacturing diagnostics company based in New Delhi.

"The DIPCOVAN kit was developed indigenously by the scientists, followed by extensive validation on more than 1,000 patient samples at various Covid-designated hospitals in Delhi. Three batches of the product were validated during the last year," the DRDO spokesperson said.

Last month, the Indian Council of Medical Research gave approval for this kit. A few days ago, the Drugs Controller General of India and the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation gave regulatory approval to manufacture for the sale and distribution of the kit.

"DIPCOVAN is intended for the qualitative detection of IgG antibodies in human serum or plasma, targeting SARS-CoV-2 related antigens," he said.

It offers a significantly faster turn-around time as it requires just 75 minutes to conduct the test without any cross-reactivity with other diseases.

The kit has a shelf life of 18 months, the DRDO added.

The product will be launched commercially in June first week and expected to cost of about Rs 75 per test.

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