Recently, a dip in testing was witnessed in the national capital New Delhi and Maharashtra, the test came down by around 37%. There is no doubt that hospitals and Covid centres must have struggled as people having Covid symptoms are rushing to get tests conducted.
Testing is an important component in this battle against novel coronavirus, but very few of us are aware of the toil behind making hundreds of thousands of testing kits without delay. Delay even by an hour can cost someone’s life as the hospital is not allowing a patient without test results.
Also Read: #FirstStoryPositive: Meet KK Gupta who cremated dozens of abandoned covid bodies in Barabanki
In the midst of all this, six women from Vadodara are tirelessly making Reverse Transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test kits from Cosara Diagnostic Pvt Lmt. Around 40 thousand test kits are shipped on the daily basis from their Diagnostic centre.
Dr Swapnali Kulkarni is the head of the technical services department at Cosara Diagnostic Pvt Lmt. She is accompanied by five other women – Kesha Parikh (Officer Production Head), Julie Tahilramani (Quality Assurance Officer), Kirti Doshi (Quality Check Officer), Janki Dalwadi and Jinitha Varghese (Research and Development Officers), who are working to produce the testing kits to meet India’s massive diagnostic demands.
There is a hefty race inside the factory between quality checks and time, the women-led team is continuously working for a year without taking a leave to fill the demand and supply gap.
Cosara Diagnostic is a pioneering supplier of RT-PCR test kits to various states. Since the Covid lockdown started in April 2020, it has supplied nearly 20,00,000 test kits. They started with the manufacturing of 8,000 testing kits on daily basis but manufacturing capacity rose by 400 percent during this second wave of Coronavirus.
Here the kits are prepared using Co-Primer Technology, which enhances speed, endurance, and cost-effectiveness. It was produced with the combination of three science fields – biotechnology, advanced algorithms, and bioinformatics.
Also Read: #FirstStoryPositive: Relief Riders from Chennai comes in rescue of vulnerable amid Covid crisis
Dr Kulkarni explained, “Traditional protein-based diagnostic tests need a particular period after infection for correct diagnosis. As early diagnosis is the basis to define the line of treatment, it becomes very crucial for doctors to choose a reliable diagnostic test that detects the presence of any pathogen as early as possible after entering the human body, and before it shows symptomatic manifestation. Our kits are based on the Real-Time PCR (RT-PCR) technique, which is the latest technology in the diagnostic field. This technique skips the wait for a longer window period.”
Once the testing kits are prepared, they go through a randomized checking and other quality checks before dispatch.