Tata Group launches COVID-19 test kits

This government-approved kit is guaranteed to deliver results within 90 minutes. The manufacturing shall be undertaken by Tata’s plant in Chennai in southern India which has the capacity to produce 1 million test kits a month.

Tata Medical and Diagnostics, the healthcare unit of India’s Tata Group has released its COVID-19 test kit on Monday which will be made available at laboratories and hospitals from December.

This government-approved kit is guaranteed to deliver results within 90 minutes. The manufacturing shall be undertaken by Tata’s plant in Chennai in southern India which has the capacity to produce 1 million test kits a month, CEO Girish Krishnamurthy said. The Seoul-based Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) had made headlines in October after developing tests with SENSR technology that can quickly detect COVID-19 within 30 minutes and was as accurate as of the current PCR diagnostic test. Siemens Healthineers, a German medical tech company was also set to expand manufacturing of COVID-19 test kits, in the Baroda plant in October. Pune-based GenePath was the first company in India to run a NABL-ICMR approved COVID-19 testing lab as well as to have received approval to manufacture its own RT-PCR test kit.

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In September, Tata received approval from the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) for the commercial launch of the country’s first CRISPR COVID-19 test.” The Tata CRISPR test is the world’s first diagnostic test to deploy a specially adapted ‘Cas9’ protein to successfully detect the virus causing COVID-19”, the company had said.

The newest launch in November comes as India’s COVID-19 cases rise by 45,903 to 8.55 million with deaths rising by 490 to 126,611, government data showed on Monday.