NIV develops test kit for antibodies

Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan on Sunday informed that the National Institute of Virology in Pune has successfully developed the first indigenous ELISA enzyme-linked test kit for detection of antibodies.

An antibody test can detect if a person has had coronavirus before and has since recovered. The test, carried out by a device that pricks your finger for blood, works this out by testing your blood for antibodies to see if they have already beaten the virus and gained some immunity to it. It can do this in about 15 minutes.

The kit was tested at two sites in Mumbai and has high sensitivity and accuracy. It can also test 90 samples together in a single run of 2.5 hours, Vardhan added.

The coronavirus swab test that the Government currently uses can only tell whether a person has the virus, not if they have had it and recovered. These swab tests also take much longer to get a result. The antibody test is also known as a "serological test".

There is no official information yet about the cost of a test – though it would clearly be in the public interest for them to be affordable to ever yone. The ICMR recently cancelled orders for about half a million Covid-19 rapid antibody test kits from China af ter they were found to be giving inaccurate results.

The Indian Council of Medical Research has partnered with Zydus Cadila pharmaceutical company for mass scale production of the ELISA test kits. The ELISA test is similar to the rapid antibody test.