ICMR-approved probe-free RT-PCRs for diagnosis of COVID-19 developed at IIT Delhi

The sensitivity of this in-house assay is comparable to that of commercially available kits. This assay can be used both as a qualitative (yes or no) assay without the need for extensive instrumentation and it can also be used for quantitatively to assess virus loads. The team proposes the use of this assay for specific and affordable high throughput screening of 2 COVID-19. Time for assay is less than 2 hours. This is a probe-free assay (i.e., low cost) and is ideal for high-throughput, largescale screening.This assay can be used as a regular PCR, i.e., it can be used in setting without a real-time PCR machine but with a regular PCR machine and agarose gel electrophoresis system. IIT Delhi KSBS Team working on this project consists of Prof. Vivekanandan Perumal, Dr Akhilesh Mishra, Dr Parul Gupta, Dr Sonam Dhamija, Prof. Manoj B. Menon, Prof. Bishwajit Kundu and Prof. James Gomes.