STAFF CORRESPONDENT

Bangladesh Council of Science and Industry Research (BCSIR) yesterday officially announced the development of a low-cost Covid-19 detection kit.

The Department of Drug Administration already approved the production of the Tk 250 kit, speakers said at a programme held at the BCSIR auditorium.

State Minister for Science and Technology Dr Yafes Osman inaugurated the kit named “BCSIR-Covid Kit”, which is the first time that a government-run organisation developed an RT-PCR kit to detect Covid.

BCSIR chair Prof Aftab Ali said about 1 crore 31 lakh 58 thousand 764 samples have been tested so far. Each Covid test costs approximately Tk 3,000-5,000. This large number of kits were entirely imported.

“BCSIR-Covid Kit will have a positive impact on our country’s economy,” he added.

The Limit of Detection (LoD) of this kit is 100 copies/mL, which is 1000 copies/mL in the case of other kits. This implies that this kit will be able to identify covid patients sooner than other kits.

The drug administration has approved the production of the kit. Besides, Bangladesh Medical Research Council has given ethical clearance for the kit, speakers said in the programme.

The kit has been developed by BCSIR in association with Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University and Dhaka University.