Transasia Launches COVID-19 IgG Antibody Kits with 98% Accuracy and at 20% Cost of RT-PCR Tests

Transasia Bio-Medicals Ltd. (Mumbai, India) has announced wide availability of its recently launched ELISA antibody test kits through its pan-India network of over 50,000 diagnostic labs.

In its advisory dated June 23, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the apex body in India for the formulation, coordination and promotion of biomedical research, allowed private laboratories and hospitals to conduct serological tests across the general population with a view to easing the country out of the three-month lockdown. The directive takes the authorized labs for COVID-19 testing from the current 500 to over 80,000 labs spread across the country. With the Indian government’s directive for sero-surveillance and identification of asymptomatic individuals, the states have been asked to step up their testing capacity and make testing available to all symptomatic patients. Several states in India such as Maharashtra, Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand have ramped up their testing with mega door-to-door serological surveys, and with the new ICMR directive, more states are likely to follow suit. In an effort to ramp up testing capacity, the ICMR recently released a comprehensive list of categories of people who should be tested as part of the sero-survey, including high-risk or vulnerable populations such as healthcare workers, frontline workers, immune-compromised individuals, individuals in containment zones, security staff, prisoners) to know who has been infected in the past and has now recovered.

Several majorly affected countries in the world are already using Transasia’s ELISA antibody test kits for past two months. Validated by ICMR and NIV, Transasia’s US-developed ErbaLisa COVID-19 IgG ELISA kit has more than 90% sensitivity and specificity, and come at 20% the cost of RT-PCR tests.

“With the country slowly trying to emerge from the lockdown and resume functionality, there is a need to scale up testing by at least five times in the next three months. ICMR’s mantra of Test, Track and Treat is very relevant in India to flatten the curve. ELISA test is a promising tool for sero-surveillance and to know where the disease stands in the curve. It is with this thought that Antibody ELISA tests are being widely conducted in the US and Europe,” said Suresh Vazirani, Chairman and Managing Director, Transasia-Erba Group.

“Being a global IVD player, Transasia has been at the epicenter of managing this crisis in the US, Europe, Latin American and Far-East countries. Depending upon the level of sero-prevalence of infection, governments and policy makers can plan and implement for prevention and control of the disease, with periodic sero-surveys used to guide the policy makers,” added Vazirani.

“Most labs in India are already equipped with ELISA automation and technicians are well trained for conducting ELISA tests, thus making it the ‘most conducive environment’ for testing. Compared to RT-PCR, the gold standard of testing, ELISA costs 80% lesser and allows for volume testing in a short time. The approved Rapid Ag tests, on the other hand, have a sensitivity of 50%, making it less reliable and requiring re-testing of large populations,” said Ravi Kaushik, CEO, Transasia Bio-Medicals.


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