The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has issued an advisory for the use of FELUDA paper strip test, the country’s first indigenously developed test for Covid-19. It detects active coronavirus infection by using CRISPR CAS9 and produces results in less than an hour. “Feluda stands for FnCas9 Editor Linked Uniform Detection Assay. It detects active Covid-19 infection by using a CRISPR CAS 9-based readout on a paper strip. RNA to detection takes place in less than one hour. It doesn’t require a real-time PCR machine, will be cheap and can be performed at point of care settings where a simple PCR machine is present,” said Dr Debojyoti Chakraborty, Senior Scientist, CSIR-IGIB
