On Saturday, September 19, The Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) gave approval for the commercial launch of India's first Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) coronavirus test 'Feluda'.
India’s first CRISPR Covid-19 test FELUDA, developed by @IGIBSocial and @TataGroup has been approved for use in India by @DCGI. Congratulations to the entire team! @PMOIndia @drharshvardhan @PrinSciAdvGoI @shekhar_mande @ICMRDELHI @AnuragAgrawalMD @Debojyo04532898
— CSIR (@CSIR_IND) September 19, 2020
Feluda happens to be a fictional Bengali private investigator starring in a series of Bengali novels of fictional detective stories written by Indian Bengali film director and writer Satyajit Ray. The team led by two Bengali-origin scientists, Dr Souvik Maiti and Dr Debojyoti Chakraborty, at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research’s Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (CSIR-IGIB), came up with a simple 'strip-test' to understand if a person is suffering from the coronavirus. This was further developed by the Tata Group.
The test for the coronavirus uses an indigenously developed, cutting-edge CRISPR technology for detection of the genomic sequence of the novel coronavirus. The Tata CRISPR test achieves accuracy levels of traditional RT-PCR tests with quicker turnaround time, less expensive equipment along with efficient ease of use.
Meanwhile, Maharashtra in the last 24 hours clocked 21,907 fresh cases of the coronavirus taking the COVID-19 tally in the state to 11,88,015. Moreover, 18,01,180 people are under home quarantine and 39,831 people in institutional quarantine. Out of 57,86,147 laboratory samples, 11,88,015 have been tested positive (20.53 per cent) for COVID-19 till date.
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