New Delhi, Oct 11 (UNI) Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Harsh Vardhan on Sunday said that the Feluda paper strip is likely to be available for the Covid-19 test in the next few weeks.

Dr Harsh Vardhan, while answering a question in the Sunday Samvaad, said in the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), testing of Feluda paper strip test on more than 2,000 patients and also in private laboratories, 96 per cent sensitivity and 98 percentage specificity was revealed.

Compared to the Indian Medical Research Council’s (ICMR) current RT-PCR kit’s accepted criteria of at least 95 per cent sensitivity and at least 99 percent specificity, the Feluda probe appears to be quite accurate.

He said the Feluda paper strip test has been developed by CSIR-IGIB and is approved by the Controller General of Indian Medicine. The kit has already been validated by the Department of Atomic Energy’s National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru. Although no exact date of its availability can be given, it is expected that the test will be available in the next few weeks.

Significantly, this test kit is named after Feluda, the main character of detective stories of famous filmmaker Satyajit Ray. The kit is like a pregnancy kit but it cannot be used to test Corona at home. Those making the test kit claim that it tells in just two hours whether the person has Corona or not.