New low-cost novel coronavirus test for the COVID-19

Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) scientists have developed a new low-cost and low-tech required test for the COVID-19 testing. This test is known as Reverse Transcription nested PCR (RT-nPCR) test.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has recommended only a reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) test for novel coronavirus testing.

The newly developed RT-nPCR test does not require real-time quantitative RT-qPCR.

The researchers reported that the RT-nPCR test has shown comparable performance to the standard RT-qPCR test.

The nested PCR (RT-nPCR) approach does not depend on RT-qPCR but uses standard RT-PCR as part of an endpoint assay.

During the trial, the RT-nPCR test was able to identify 90% of the detected samples as positive by RT-qPCR.