Covid results in an hour from Goa-based startup

NEW DELHI: A dozen states have lined up at the door of Molbio Diagnostics, a Goa-based Start-up, for its ‘Made In India’ TrueNat testing machines for Covid-19. There are 1,650 such machines in the field with a million tests being carried out in India on them so far.

States seeking these machines include those struggling with low testing levels per million population, like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Telangana, and looking to ramp up in the midst of the rapidly spreading Covid-19 pandemic.“The Centre and about ten states have separately placed orders with us. The Centre has ordered 1,512 machines out of which 500 have been supplied, already. Different states have ordered a total of 500 machines out of which 350 have been delivered. Nearly a million tests in the country have been delivered on our machines,” Sriram Natarajan, CEO of Molbio Diagnostics, told ET.

The machine is worth Rs 13 lakh and works on testing kits provided by the company that cost about Rs 1,200 each.

The Centre has also placed an order of 12 Lakh TrueNat test kits out of which seven lakh have been supplied and the remaining will be delivered over the next two weeks, Natarajan said.“Andhra Pradesh has ordered two lakh tests while Goa, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Odisha, Telangana, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim have ordered another two lakh tests. Another 2.5 lakh tests have been supplied against these state government orders,” Natarajan said.

He said Rajasthan and Maharashtra are also in talks with the company for the TrueNat machines and the testing kits. The TrueNat machines and kits procured by the Centre have also been sent to various states. A senior central government functionary told ET that TrueNat machines “are an excellent example of AtmaNirbhar Bharat” and give results in under an hour and at the fraction of the cost of a regular RT-PCR Test.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has flown in the state aircraft to Goa twice to bring in 50 such TrueNat machines as the state wants to increase its testing capacity to 20,000 daily, while Bihar is expecting its second consignment of about 50 TrueNat machines this week from Goa to increase its testing capacity to 10,000 tests daily, senior officials in these states told ET.UP has tested around 4 lakh people so far, while Bihar has done only about 1.10 lakh tests over 75 days.

Natarajan said the TrueNat platform is unique as it can be deployed at primary health centres (PHC) and decentralises testing mechanisms. About 450 machines in private labs and 350 in district hospitals and PHCs are functioning. These machines are also useful as they offer a multi-purpose platform to test for as many as 25 diseases, including tuberculosis, dengue, hepatitis A&B and chikungunya, Natarajan said.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/2N3hHhj