FELUDA test close to be available in the market by October-end

NEW DELHI: The FNCAS-9 Editor-limited Uniform Detection Assay (FELUDA) test, India’s first indigenously developed test for COVID-19 is expected to be available in the laboratories for commercial purposes by the end of October 2020. It has been developed by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and will be promoted by Tata Sons.

The FELUDA test is distinguished to have 96 per cent sensitivity and 98 per cent accuracy, which means that it can correctly identify both positive and negative cases 96 or 98 per cent of the time. This test is faster, cheaper and more portable than reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test.

The FELUDA test is a paper based test which shows result for positive in form of two blue lines and a single line for a negative. It resembles a home pregnancy test. It does not need a second approval by a laboratory. Moreover, since the test is easy-to-use, no expert personnel is required to administer it. Dr Anurag Agrawal , Director of CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), said that this paper testing stage of the test takes two minutes, but the test has many other steps which might take more time. Nevertheless, the FELUDA test is more adaptable in a broad range of settings than other testing approaches.